


Return to Junction City

by IdaArmindaMoss, RKMacBride



Series: Let Him That Stole Steal No More [8]
Category: Alias Smith and Jones
Genre: Christian content, Gen, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 47,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27116236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IdaArmindaMoss/pseuds/IdaArmindaMoss, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RKMacBride/pseuds/RKMacBride
Summary: The long-planned visit to Junction City is finally accomplished, resulting in unexpected developments in the lives of Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry.  The danger is much less than they anticipated, but now they must cope with Judge Hanley's suggested course of action, which threatens to disarrange all of their lives.Note:  a tiny additional scene was added to the end of Chapter Five on December 4th, 2020.
Series: Let Him That Stole Steal No More [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1244081
Comments: 40
Kudos: 15





	1. Richard Bancroft's Letter Is Delivered

**Author's Note:**

> Casting:  
> Pete Duel as Hannibal Heyes  
> Ben Murphy as Kid Curry  
> J. D. Cannon as Detective Harry Briscoe  
> Jack Albertson as Judge Hanley  
> Angus Duncan OR Adam West as Chester Brubaker, Counsellor-at-Law (Both actors made excellent contributions to the character of Mr. Brubaker. Since a reference is made in the story to Hadleyburg, it’s possible that Adam West might be a better choice, but no description is given, so it is whichever the reader desires.)  
> Bryan Montgomery as Deputy Johnny Miller  
> Jessica Stroup as Paula Wellington  
> Richard Long as Richard Bancroft, Counsellor-at-Law
> 
> English spelling and hyphenation conventions follow those in use at the time of the story, as far as possible. Many features which we now think of as typically American did not actually come into common use until after the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.

**Junction City, New Mexico Territory, May 29th, 1882**

Paula Wellington rode into the pretentiously named little town of Junction City, New Mexico—it did, in fact, boast a rail junction, but otherwise was more of a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere— alone, mounted on a black Arabian mare bred on her own ranch four years earlier. In a pocket in her bodice reposed a letter from Richard Bancroft, Counsellor-at-Law, addressed to Judge James R. Hanley and Attorney Chester Brubaker, both of Junction City. She had been carrying the letter since she, Hannibal Heyes, and Kid Curry had left Telluride, Colorado at the end of March, with instructions from Richard, now their friend as well as their officially retained lawyer, to hand-deliver it to Junction City as soon as could be managed. That had been almost three months ago; it was now Monday, the 29th of May. 

On Richard’s advice after he had heard the story of their relations with Judge Hanley, Heyes and Kid were waiting outside the town for Paula to bring them word as to whether Judge Hanley would agree to see them. The last time he had spoken to them, he had suggested that he never expected to see them again, and though they subsequently had been in contact with Brubaker by express messenger, to request his legal assistance in defending Matt and Bess Tapscott, they had not ventured to return to Junction City until now.

She swung down in front of the small courthouse building, which appeared to also house several offices, and smoothed the skirt of her well-worn but still neat riding habit. The matching dark blue bodice was in considerably better condition, and she hoped that she appeared business-like enough for the judge’s clerk, not to mention the judge, to take her seriously.

*** *** ***

Bruce Carothers, the young man who served Judge Hanley as a confidential clerk while pursuing his legal studies through a correspondence course, came into the judge’s chambers, rather excited. “Judge, there’s a lady outside, says she wants to see you on a confidential matter. She’s nicely dressed and very pretty, but I’ve never seen her before—she’s not from around here, that’s for sure. Here’s her card.”

The older man replied, “Well, show her in, boy. Now you have me curious.” He glanced at the card, then rose as his visitor entered, a sealed letter in her hand. “Please take a seat, Miss Wellington, and let me know how I can serve you.”

“Thank you, Judge,” she replied, and seated herself in the chair he had indicated, trying to conceal a certain amount of inward trepidation. The boys’ safety depended on how well she discharged her errand. “It’s a rather complicated matter, and quite confidential, as your clerk intimated. Before we go any further, I should tell you that I am the bearer of a letter addressed to both you and Mr. Chester Brubaker. I am instructed to ask if he can be included in this discussion.”

Intrigued, Judge Hanley rose from his seat and walked to the door. “So you are acting as an emissary, Miss Wellington?” She nodded as he opened the door and called to his clerk. “Bruce, would you ask Mr. Brubaker to come here as soon as may be? Tell him there is a lady asking to meet with both of us on a confidential matter. Take this,” he added, handing over the visiting card. “And…,” he glanced back at his visitor. “May I send over to the café for some coffee for you? Or tea, if you prefer?”

“That’s very kind of you,” she responded. “Hot tea would be marvellous, if it can be obtained.”

“You hear, Bruce? Hot tea for the lady, and coffee for Brubaker and me.”

“Sure thing, Judge.” The young clerk was out the door on the instant. He returned in a very short space of time with Chester Brubaker on his heels and showed him in. “The tea and coffee will be here in a few minutes.”

“Excellent. When it comes, bring it in yourself, and then see to it we’re not disturbed, if you please.”

Brubaker was shaking hands with Miss Wellington. She smiled up at him. “I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Brubaker. I have heard very good reports of your legal talents.”

The lawyer was astonished. It was useful to have a good reputation in one’s profession, but on the other hand, he could not imagine how this woman, living on a horse ranch in northern Colorado according to her card, from Great Britain by her speech, could have heard anything useful about him. His practice normally did not extend far outside the environs of Junction City, except for one unusual case not quite two years before, which had taken him to the town of Hadleyburg, also in New Mexico. His eyes rested on the striking flame-colored gem[1] on the third finger of her left hand, and he wondered who the fortunate man might be.

They chatted lightly, Paula telling them about the horse ranch she and her brother had settled under the provisions of the Homestead Act ten years earlier, until the clerk brought in a tray with tea, coffee, cream, sugar, and a stack of cups, then left, shutting the door behind him.

“Now, Miss Wellington,” said the judge encouragingly, “Mr. Brubaker and I are ready to give you our undivided attention.”

“I appreciate it, gentlemen,” she replied. “About two years ago, you had two men in your jail here, wanted for bank and train robbery in Wyoming. Before extradition papers could arrive, you set bail for them, Judge, equivalent to the cash they had available, and released them, saying that you never expected to see them again, or words to that effect.”

“That would have been Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry. I remember them quite well.” Hanley was nodding. A smile crossed Brubaker’s face as he recalled how much he had enjoyed defending the court case in Hadleyburg at the request of those same two bank and train robbers, and how much they had paid him to handle the case—far more than his usual fee. This conversation would not be dull if it had anything to do with that pair.

“As it happens,” Miss Wellington continued, “they have retained Mr. Richard Bancroft, of Telluride, Colorado, to be their regular attorney, without any prejudice intended towards their prior relationship with you, Mr. Brubaker. Mr. Bancroft offered his legal services at the request of a mutual friend. In view of the fact that both of you gentlemen are in the legal profession and are somewhat familiar with the terms of the amnesty promised to Mr. Heyes and Mr. Curry by Governor Hoyt in the Territory of Wyoming, Mr. Bancroft hopes that a professional relationship can be established between the three of you which will prove to be of benefit to his clients. He has written a letter to both of you which I understand discusses that in some detail.” She laid the letter on the table in front of her.

“Mr. Bancroft thought that it would be better if you were to discuss with his clients in person some of the matters he raises in his letter. I’ve been asked to ascertain whether you will agree to meet with Mr. Heyes and Mr. Curry,” she looked from one man to the other gravely, “and whether you will promise them safe conduct so that the meeting may take place. They are waiting in a safe place for me to carry your answer to them.”

Judge Hanley glanced briefly at the lawyer, who nodded. “We would be delighted to welcome Mr. Heyes and Mr. Curry here, as soon as may be convenient to them, and you and they have my word, Miss Wellington,” he said, looking seriously into her deep blue eyes, “that they will be safe.”

“You have my word as well,” added Brubaker. “In any case, they are still retaining me as counsel and I would do nothing to endanger that relationship. The only other man in town who would know them by sight is our sheriff’s deputy, Johnny Miller. He was present at the jail when they were arrested and got a good look at them. However, he’s out of town just now, visiting family, and is expected to be gone for another ten days.”

“If young Mr. Miller returns unexpectedly, I will deal with that,” Hanley assured her. “But, as Brubaker says, currently he is out of town. Mr. Heyes and Mr. Curry can come openly into town and register at the hotel—though I would advise not using their real names.”

“Sheriff Lom Trevors of Porterville, Wyoming, who has been handling their communications with the governor, gave them aliases,” she replied. “They’ve been using the names Joshua Smith and Thaddeus Jones ever since.” She made a move to rise.

“Just a moment,” said the judge. “Before you go, I presume to take Heyes and Curry the message and bring them back with you, I have a couple of questions, if you have the answers and don’t mind telling me.”

“Of course.” Miss Wellington looked from one to the other, her expression reserved and her eyes wary.

_Yes_ , thought Hanley. _She obviously knows them quite well and has spent considerable time in their company. But how on earth did a lady such as she get mixed up in this?_ “The first question,” he continued aloud, “is about the amnesty offer. I understand it was intended to be kept secret, and they couldn’t tell me about it when they were here, but you mentioned it openly, probably to save them the embarrassment of explaining that they couldn’t discuss it.” She nodded. “Do you know exactly when that offer was made to them?”

“In late October of ’seventy-nine,” she replied readily.

“And did the governor mention any particular period of time?”

“My understanding is that he said ‘about a year’. Of course, that was well over two years ago now.” She kept her voice carefully neutral.

“Two years and seven months!” exclaimed the judge. “That’s—that’s unconscionable!” He looked at Brubaker. “I think I can guess some of the things Counsellor Bancroft would like to discuss with us. It’s very possible that a lawyer could be of assistance to them now … not to mention a judge.”

“Yes, your honour,” said Paula softly. She slipped her handkerchief out and quickly dried her eyes, which had unexpectedly filled with tears. Richard Bancroft’s instincts had not been wrong. Judge Hanley, a man of honor in more ways than one, was proving to be a good friend to have. Sipping the last of her tea, she waited with as much composure as she could muster for the next question.

“Don’t look so worried, Miss Wellington. I would not ask you to betray a confidence. But I should just like to know how you come to be involved in this matter, and why you are being employed as a go-between.”

“Ah.” The lady had noticed both men observing her engagement ring, and had been expecting this question. She smiled radiantly. “I have the honour to be betrothed to Hannibal Heyes.”

“Betrothed!” exclaimed Brubaker. _To Heyes, of all men_ , he thought to himself. _I would never have guessed that. I’d have thought it more likely that Curry would be the lady’s man, if one could think such a thing about either of them._

“When did that happen?” the judge asked. 

“Thirteen months ago, in Idaho Springs, Colorado. Before that, we were promised. He gave me this promise ring,” she said, tapping the amethyst she now wore on her right hand, “in January of ’eighty-one.”

“So you’ve known them for a considerable time.”

“Yes. It would be about nineteen months now.” She smiled. “It’s quite a long story, which we can go into later if you are interested.”

Hanley was shaking his head. Ever the lawyer, all sorts of concerns and unpleasant possibilities had sprung into his mind. “Don’t you—forgive me, but haven’t you any family?” he asked.

“I have family in both Scotland and England, but we are not particularly close. On the other hand, my twin brother and I are exceedingly close—and yes, Heyes formally asked his permission and he gave it. My brother and I own the C Bar W Ranch in northern Colorado.”

“My dear young lady, don’t you realize that you are taking a considerable risk?” the judge demanded, speaking, out of his concern, with more force than he intended.

_Which risk would that be, I wonder?_ thought Paula to herself wryly. _There are so many_. “I’m aware of the risks, sir,” she said, her tone repressive. “Hannibal Heyes is the man that God has sent to me, the man I have chosen to marry. I am very blessed that, with God’s guidance, he has also chosen me.”

“Of course,” Hanley responded. “I did not intend that to be a criticism of the rightness of your betrothal; only, perhaps, a question as to the wisdom of such a course of action at this time.” Accepting the snub, he rose and offered his hand to assist her from her chair. “You had best go and tell your fiancé and his partner that we are waiting to meet with them. How long do you think it will take you to return?”

“Perhaps an hour and a half,” said Paula, rising and opening her hunter watch, which declared the time to be half-past ten in the morning.

“Shall we plan to meet here in my chambers at one o’clock? That will give you time to check into the hotel first, while we read Counsellor Bancroft’s letter and discuss that and some other matters of importance. I will have lunch sent in for all of us, and then we can eat and talk without interruption,” Judge Hanley suggested.

“That’s most kind of you,” said Miss Wellington. “We’ll be here at one.” The door closed behind her, leaving Hanley and Brubaker to exchange wondering glances.

*** *** ***

Riding out of town in the opposite direction to that from which she had arrived, Paula took precautions to ensure that she was not being followed, and then cut across country to the carefully chosen rendezvous point with Heyes and Kid. 

Heyes was on the lookout for her. “Everything go all right?” he asked, reaching up to lift her down from the saddle, a courtesy he rarely failed to perform, just as he almost always remembered to offer her assistance in mounting up. This made Paula feel absurdly like some fragile maiden from a previous century rather than the part owner of a successful horse ranch. It was a wonderful feeling, though, to have a man take so much thought for one’s ease and comfort, and the seemingly effortless strength with which he lifted her down always gave her a tiny thrill.

“All well,” she said, giving her skirt a quick shake. “Judge Hanley and Mr. Brubaker will be waiting for us in the judge’s chambers at one. That will give us time to see to our horses, check into the hotel, and change clothes. They want to read over Richard’s letter before we come. I suspect the judge also wants to think of lots of questions to ask us, or to ask the two of you, anyway. He’ll have lunch sent in so that we can eat while we talk, in the privacy of his chambers.” She relayed the judge’s assurances of safety and explained about the young acting sheriff’s absence, then went on to relate how much she had said about the amnesty offer and what Hanley’s reaction had been.

*** *** ***

Passing Bancroft’s letter to Mr. Brubaker, Judge Hanley busied himself writing a quick note to his wife. He called to his clerk, handing him the folded note and requesting him to take it to Mrs. Hanley at their home a mile outside of town. “I’ve asked her to come here as soon as she can, so I’d like you to wait for her to get ready, and then drive her back into town. You can take my buggy. When you get back, take this second note over to the café, and get some lunch yourself. I won’t need you again until a quarter to one, just before Miss Wellington is expected to return. There will be two gentlemen with her, and we shall need the whole afternoon free from interruption, so you will have to make my excuses to anyone wishing to see me or Mr. Brubaker.”

*** *** ***

Having seen to their horses and retrieved what they needed from the pack carried by Miss Wellington’s mule, the three registered at the small hotel, Paula taking one room and the two men signing into another as Joshua Smith and Thaddeus Jones according to their usual practice. Mindful of the need to make a good impression, they changed into clean shirts and added ties and coats—cream shirt and brown pinwale corduroy coat for Heyes, white shirt and saddle-tan leather coat for Kid. Paula rearranged her hair and changed into a pale blue afternoon walking dress trimmed with navy blue piping, complemented by the one dressy hat she had with her, to do Heyes credit. They walked over to the courthouse together.

Young Carothers was looking out for them. Showing them in, he left to tell the couple who owned the café across the street that they were ready for the lunch, previously bespoken, to be sent over to the judge’s chambers, remaining to help carry the trays as Judge Hanley had reminded him to do.

Hanley and Brubaker rose to exchange handshakes with Heyes and Curry, and Hanley then surprisingly turned to introduce his wife, Louisa, sitting quietly in a corner, her hands occupied with a prosaic piece of knitting. He assured his visitors of his wife’s agreement to keeping the conversation, and the identities of the outlaws, confidential. The men remained standing until Miss Wellington had seated herself. 

“Thank you for agreeing to see us, Judge,” Heyes began. “We weren’t sure, after what you said when you released us on bail, if you wanted to, or if our coming back would cause trouble for you.” He grinned cheerfully at Brubaker. “And thank you, Mr. Brubaker, for the excellent work you did on that case with the Tapscotts.”

“It was a pleasure—a real pleasure,” replied the lawyer. “The prosecutor didn’t have a good case against them, you know. It was all circumstantial, with no serious evidence introduced. But I have to admit that without a lawyer, they might have found it difficult to convince the jury.”

Judge Hanley added, “That admonition to you about never expecting to see you again was simply to let you know what my intention was in setting the bail so low. After reading Mr. Bancroft’s letter, I wish to tell you that not only are you both quite welcome here, but that Mr. Brubaker and I intend to do everything in our power to assist Mr. Bancroft and help the two of you gain the amnesty that was promised you. I agree with both of your attorneys—it is more than time that you availed yourselves of the services of a good lawyer in this matter.”

“Well, we can’t, really,” said Heyes. “We’re not in a position to do anything to put pressure on the governor.” He added, after a slight pause, “And I suppose he knows that. Maybe I’m being too cynical, but …”

Brubaker broke in. “No, Mr. Heyes, I don’t think you’re being overly cynical. It is possible that the governor didn’t expect you and your partner to be able to keep the terms of the amnesty offer, rather than simply making you a promise which he never intended to keep, as you were about to suggest. It’s quite true that there’s very little you can do, but there is a great deal that an attorney friendly to your case can do, even without taking any official action such as the pursuit of legal remedies. That will be up to Counsellor Bancroft and me.”

At this point, a knock on the door heralded the arrival of lunch. Mrs. Hanley and Miss Wellington took charge of the food and made sure that the men were provided with everything they needed before shutting the door behind the clerk and one of the waitresses from the café, and resuming their seats. Everyone began to eat.

“I intend,” continued Judge Hanley, after applying himself to his food for a few minutes, “to form an unofficial association, consisting of anyone who has your best interests at heart and is not himself at odds with the law, to make sure that no avenue is left unexplored to get this matter settled for you. I had thought of calling it the Heyes and Curry Amnesty Achievement Association. You gentleman can help by giving me the names and addresses of anyone you think might be useful. I have already had the pleasure of making your fiancée’s acquaintance, Mr. Heyes, but from what Counsellor Bancroft writes, you have other well-wishers in various locations around the West. And, Mr. Curry, is there a lady somewhere who is interested in your future welfare?”

Kid Curry blushed suddenly. “Yes, your honor, there is. Miss Lillian O’More owns a restaurant in Telluride. Richard Bancroft is her man of business—that’s how we met him. We were betrothed at the end of the summer. Most people in the town still know me as Thaddeus Jones, but at least they know now that I’m not just a drifter taking advantage of her kindness.” After a moment’s thought, he added. “And Richard—Mr. Bancroft, that is—was one of the men who baptized me last July. That’s one of the reasons he wants to help us.” His face was transformed by a sudden brilliant smile.

Judge Hanley, a deacon in the local Methodist church, nodded. This bore out certain hints that Miss Wellington had already dropped. “So you are a follower of Jesus Christ, Mr. Curry?”

“Yeah.” Kid grinned—he couldn’t help himself. “So’s Heyes, now.”

“I was baptized four weeks ago, the second of May,” said Heyes in a low voice, still unwilling to say much about the astonishing experience he had undergone, and the terrifying, agonizing months leading up to it.

“Gentlemen, that is very good hearing.” The judge reached forward to shake their hands. More than a simple gesture of greeting now, it was a welcome to brothers in the family of God. “I’m glad you mentioned that, because it gives me the opportunity to bring up something rather important, though not encompassed by your attorney’s suggested topic of conversation. I think that a detailed discussion of your amnesty prospects, together with some inquiries that I should like to make into your activities since you went straight, had best wait for tomorrow or even the next day, when your party is more rested, and after we have discussed this other matter.” 

* * *

[1] A spessartite or cinnamon garnet. They were obtainable in the American West at this period through jewellers in larger cities, such as I. Haberl in Denver, who were willing to import them from Africa.


	2. "It's Just Not How I Planned!"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Concerned about a legal scenario that Heyes and Kid had never taken into account, Judge Hanley suggests a solution. Can all of the parties agree on what's best?

Heyes and Kid exchanged questioning glances. “Sure, your honor, whatever you prefer,” said Heyes. 

“Richard told us to take your advice, so we’re ready to go along with whatever you suggest,” added Kid.

Heyes gave his partner another look—he wasn’t quite sure that he would have put it just that way, but after all, they had trusted Judge Hanley once before, and hadn’t regretted it. He returned his attention to the judge.

“Good!” Hanley turned to Paula. “Miss Wellington, I have some questions for you. You said that you have been acquainted with these gentlemen for approximately nineteen months.” She nodded. “Have you been travelling with them all that time?”

“Well, yes and no,” answered Paula thoughtfully, with no trace of consciousness in her manner. Whatever she had been doing, she wasn’t ashamed of it, the judge realized. “We were in Texas when Heyes and I started becoming better acquainted. My brother and I have a part-time connection with the Texas Rangers, Company B, in Laredo, so my brother was with us at the time. Due to a number of unforeseen circumstances, I ended up returning to Colorado while my brother remained in Laredo. Heyes and Kid offered to escort me. Kid agreed, at my brother’s request, to act as a chaperon, since Heyes and I were newly promised. The trip took about two and a half weeks, with one stop at the house of a friend of theirs, and I think that’s the longest time I actually travelled with them alone.” She hesitated. “I’ve been well chaperoned, if that’s what you’re asking.”

The judge nodded encouragingly, and she realized he wanted her to continue. “We spent some time at our ranch, and then in March of last year, Heyes and Kid took jobs in Central City, whilst I stayed at a hotel in Denver. After Kid broke his leg on the way down to Idaho Springs, I joined them, taking rooms in Idaho Springs and a temporary job in a dress shop. When they left for Telluride in June, I went with them. That trip took about eight days by rail and horse. In Telluride, I stayed with Lillian O’More in her house, which allowed us to have the gentlemen in for visits.”

She paused to collect her thoughts. She was omitting a great deal, but assuming the judge was concerned about propriety, which seemed to be the case from the circumstance of his having asked his wife to be present, he only needed to know the general outline of things. “We rode to Oneida, Texas in the autumn to assist a Ranger acquaintance of mine with a couple of investigations. We stayed in a large hotel and there was always someone else present when Heyes and I were seeing one another socially.” 

Thinking she had better omit all mention of the flying trip to Tombstone to see Clementine Hale given into the hands of her future husband, _Alcalde_ Ramón Córdoba of Santa Marta, Paula continued, “When Kid got a telegraph saying Lillian was gravely ill, we made our way to Durango in southern Colorado, where my brother met us with supplies and extra horses, before we crossed Ophir Pass to reach Telluride. Because of the snow, we were unable to leave Telluride again until March of this year, and again, while we were there, I stayed with Lillian.”

Brubaker nodded to Judge Hanley. This provided a partial answer to a question they had both had: where on earth was Telluride?

“After that, there was a series of short trips punctuated by hotel stays of a week or more. One time, we were chased by a posse following up a report from somebody who thought he recognized Heyes and Kid, and we had to separate temporarily. The posse caught up with me, which did them no good and me no harm, and gave Heyes and Kid a chance to get clear.”

The judge interrupted at this point. “Were you arrested, Miss Wellington?”

“Well, yes, I was,” she answered, “but they didn’t have anything on which they could hold me, because they not only couldn’t prove that I knew the men I was with were Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry, they couldn’t even prove for certain that the men they had been chasing _were_ Heyes and Curry.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the shock on Heyes’s face, and winced inwardly. He had been so taken up with finding Kid, who had turned up missing after arriving in the town of Ashford where they were supposed to meet, that she hadn’t wanted to add to his worries by telling him of the arrest. She knew she was probably going to hear about it when they got back to the hotel later in the afternoon. “I was only held overnight, and there was no harm done. In the end, they were quite anxious to release me after being shown my Ranger badge and letter of authorization, and after I told them to telegraph Captain Parmalee of Company B to confirm the relationship.”

In spite of himself, Hanley smiled. He could imagine the effect that such a revelation would have had. “Please go on,” he urged.

“In May, we went to our ranch in Estes Park. While there we received an agitated telegraph from Mr. Bancroft. He was overjoyed to hear that Heyes had made a profession of faith and had been baptized, but reminded us that we were carrying a letter to be hand-delivered here in Junction City. So we set out to come here as quickly as we could.” Paula smiled at the judge, and at Mrs. Hanley, who she noticed had been attending to this part of the conversation closely. “I think that’s all. There has been a certain amount of danger, but I am no stranger to that, and we have always taken care to preserve the proprieties.”

Glancing from her to Heyes and Curry, who were nodding, even though Heyes had been looking extraordinarily serious ever since the mention of his lady’s arrest, Judge Hanley said, “It seems to me that you have taken admirable precautions to safeguard Miss Wellington’s reputation, and, as you say, some danger was only to be expected in your situation. But there is another circumstance to which none of you, apparently, has given any thought.” He had everyone’s attention now, and paused, wondering how best to phrase his next sentence.

“Mr. Heyes, what was your intention when you and Miss Wellington entered into a formal betrothal? That is, when did you think that your situation might permit you to be married?”

“It has to be after we get the amnesty, Judge, or get clear with the law some other way,” Heyes answered. “I can’t ask her to marry me—well, I can, and I did,” he smiled reminiscently, “but I can’t ask her to actually go ahead with it while I’m still wanted by the law. I could be shot by a bounty hunter, or arrested and sent to prison—and I can’t put her in that position. It wouldn’t be right. In fact, it’d be pretty selfish if I just decided to go ahead and marry her without any thought for what she might have to face later. Besides,” he added, after a short pause, “I’m not sure how we’d go about it. Even Revd. Austin in Telluride doesn’t know our real names, and I can’t—at least, I’d rather not—get married as Joshua Smith, and then have to redo the ceremony later. I’m not even sure that would be legal.” His expression hardened. “Anyway, I won’t do that to her.”

Hanley sighed. He had been afraid of that. Such sentiments were admirable, and no more than he would have expected from the honorable man he knew Heyes to be, but it was not going to make what he had to say any easier.

As the judge did not speak immediately, Paula prompted, “Something we hadn’t thought of, sir?”

“Yes. If the two of you are arrested,” he said, looking from Heyes to Curry and back, “and she happens to be arrested with you, two things can happen. The first is that she can be charged with aiding and abetting the escape of a wanted outlaw from justice, and, by extension, with being an accessory after the fact.”

Paula nodded, and Heyes and Kid exchanged glances. They had, in fact, been aware of that, but there hadn’t seemed to be anything they could do about it. Lillian O’More and anyone else who knew who they were faced a similar danger.

Hanley continued, “The second, far more serious …” He paused to make sure he had Heyes’s attention. “When your case goes to trial, Miss Wellington could be forced to testify against you. No court would believe that she has been acquainted with you all this time without learning something that would be useful in evidence, even if she has no personal knowledge of your holding up a train.”

“But she does,” Heyes protested. “That’s how we met—or at least that’s how she knew me again when we did finally meet. We stopped a train she and her brother were on, back in ’seventy-eight.”

Paula dropped her eyes to her knitting. Even with her limited knowledge of the law, she could see where this was leading. It had been something she had never spoken of to Heyes, because she did not want him to feel that she was trying to manœuvre him into something, or worse, to think he had to send her home to the ranch in order to keep her safe.

Heyes was frowning. “Force her to testify?”

“That, or perjure herself trying to protect you, which would leave her open to other charges.”

“All right, I can see that,” said Heyes, “but there’s not much we can do about it except take precautions.”

“Yes, there is,” replied Hanley. “You’re familiar with the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution?”

“Of course. They can’t force me to incriminate myself on the witness stand, or even force me to testify. I do know that. What does that have to do with Paula?”

“It has this to do with her. Under the protection afforded by statute in every state, and in every territory by that amendment, she cannot be forced to testify against her husband. As long as she is not married to you, she is fair game for any prosecutor. As your wife, she would be safe—from that risk, at least.”

As Heyes, his brown eyes widening in dismay, could not think of a word to say in response, the judge continued. “Under the authority vested in me by the Territory of New Mexico, I can marry Miss Wellington to you, using your true name, as soon as a private ceremony can be arranged: today, if you wish. For her protection, I would seriously advise you to consider it.”

There was an appalled silence. Heyes looked at his betrothed. She gazed back at him seriously but with no appearance of surprise, shock, or annoyance. He suddenly realized, disbelievingly, that she found the judge’s offer welcome. She made no sign and offered no comment, however, and he knew she was waiting for him to speak. For a moment, he couldn’t. It all sounded so reasonable—but he could not bring himself to even consider a course of action so dishonorable. To tie up the woman he loved in marriage to a wanted outlaw, when he could be killed or arrested at any moment, leaving her to face the shame either of being Hannibal Heyes’s widow or of being married to a convict who was serving a twenty-year sentence in the Wyoming Territorial Prison, was more than he could contemplate without a sense of horror. He just couldn’t do it. They couldn’t demand that of him. Then his thoughts went back to the alternatives Judge Hanley had described—Paula being forced to testify against him, her testimony instrumental in sending him to prison, or committing perjury, and going to prison herself. 

He swallowed, and out of long habit, glanced at his partner for support. Kid returned his gaze, his expression sombre, but said nothing. Heyes deduced from this that Kid thought what he had to say would not be welcome. _And a lot of use that is_ , he thought in annoyance.

He drew a deep breath, and stood up. “Paula and I need to talk this over in private.” Paula had risen as well, obliging the other three men to do the same. She came over to stand beside him, putting her hand inside the curve of his arm and giving it a slight squeeze.

Brubaker spoke up quickly. “I’ll show you to the room they keep for attorney–client consultations.” He opened the door, prepared to lead the way.

Drawing his watch from his pocket, Kid made a note of the time. “It’s a quarter past two. If I don’t see you back here in thirty minutes, Heyes, I’m coming to find you.”

Paula thanked him as she always did when he took his duties as chaperon so seriously, Heyes nodded, and she and Heyes left the room in Brubaker’s wake.

When the lawyer returned, Kid Curry and Judge Hanley were talking quietly about the problems inherent in the task of chaperonage Kid had undertaken at the request of Heyes’s future brother-in-law. Kid explained ingenuously that there had only been one time, out on the trail after a long lunch stop, when the couple had become a little carried away with exchanging kisses, and he had been obliged to fire over their heads. Brubaker put his hand up to hide a smile. “I expect that got their attention,” he suggested. 

“Yep,” Kid responded. “Never had to do it again.” He looked seriously at Judge Hanley. “The thing is, she never really had a chance to go home from the time she joined us in Idaho Springs till just a few weeks ago, when we returned to the ranch—and then she had to come here with us. We do try to take really good care of her.”

“I’m sure you do, Mr. Curry,” Hanley replied. “What do you think your partner is likely to do?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure, but I expect when they come back he’ll be resigned to the idea somehow. He knows it’s good, Judge, what you said. He just never thought about it like that before. For that matter, neither did I—but Lillian doesn’t travel with us. She’s not in that kind of danger.” He hesitated. “Heyes can be awfully stubborn, though, if he thinks he’s right. I can’t really speak for him. It’s not that he doesn’t want to marry her. He just thinks it wouldn’t be the gentlemanly thing to do, not while we’re still wanted. You’ve put him in a pretty bad fix. If it was me, after what you said, I’d do it, but Heyes ain’t me.”

After some thought, Kid added. “There’s another thing, Judge. If he does agree to it, I know you said you could do it today, but….” He stopped, not wanting to argue with a judge. “I mean, don’t you think that would look like they had to get married? You know, because she was …” he stopped again. “And her brother would think I hadn’t been doin’ my job.”

“This young man is right, James,” said Mrs. Hanley quietly. “Even though no one knows them in this town, it might look bad if they were to get married in such haste.”

“Yes, of course, my dear,” said Hanley. He turned back to Kid. “If there were time, would her brother come? She told me he approved of the proposed marriage.”

“Yeah, he does. Like a shot, I imagine.”

“How long would it take him to get here?”

Kid thought for a moment. “About three days, maybe a little more.”

“So we could put this off until Thursday evening at least. Who else of your friends would come if they were notified?”

Kid’s eyes began to dance. “Doc MacKenzie in Idaho Springs, for sure. I don’t know about anybody else. I mean, there’s people we’d have to send telegraphs to, but he’s the only one I think would try to come if he could. It’d take him about two days to get here. I’ll have to tell you some time how we came to be friends with him, and with his friend Bob Anderson, the sheriff there, but it’ll take a while.”

He broke off, coming to his feet in a hurry as the door opened to admit Heyes and Paula and he caught a glimpse of his partner’s face. Heyes was very pale, looking almost as if he were going to be sick. Kid was at his partner’s side in two steps, putting a hand underneath his elbow to steady him. _What could she have said to him?_ he thought frantically.

Before he could speak, he saw that Paula was trying to catch his eye, a worried look on her face. _He needs you_. Aloud, she said briskly, “I’m going to take these trays and plates over to the café. I’ll be back in a little while.”

Mrs. Hanley rose at once and helped her gather up the dishes. Nothing was said until the door had shut behind the two women.

Kid obliged his cousin to sit down, and poured him a glass of brandy from the decanter reposing in a tray on top of the judge’s bookcase. It had been offered earlier, but they had declined it in favor of coffee. “Heyes, what did she say?”

Hanley and Brubaker, astonished at this gentler side to a man thought to be the fastest gun in two states and three territories, looked at each other, nonplussed. Taking a swallow, Heyes shook his head. He seemed unable to collect his thoughts enough to answer. 

“Come on,” Kid urged. “What was it? Drink up—you look like you’re about to pass out. Did she … did she break the engagement?”

That startled Heyes into speech. “No. Oh, no, nothing like that.” He drank some more of the brandy. “In fact she thinks the judge’s suggestion is a good idea and she’s perfectly willing to comply with it. It’s just … Kid, did Lillian ever tell you that she and Paula had discussed … you know, about what might happen if we got sent to prison?”

“No,” replied Kid, “but I ain’t surprised they did. They like each other—in fact, they got to be good friends last summer—and they’re women, after all. Women talk a lot. Besides, when they took up with the two of us, that was bound to come up.” He paused to give Heyes a chance to answer, but when his cousin said nothing, he went on. “Come on, Heyes, you’d better tell me. Start at the beginning and tell me what you said to Paula, or asked her, that made her start talking about that.”

Heyes drew a deep breath. His partner’s matter-of-fact approach seemed to steady him. “She told me she could see I didn’t like the idea. She wanted to know why not—just asking, not trying to accuse me of saying I didn’t want to marry her or anything. So I told her,” he looked up at Judge Hanley, “pretty much what I said earlier this afternoon, only in a little more detail. I wanted to protect her from the awkwardness of being a notorious outlaw’s widow, or from the shame of being married to a convict. You know nobody’d grant her a divorce under those circumstances, because I wouldn’t have been unfaithful to her, and the desertion wouldn’t be deliberate, and there she’d be, married—to a prisoner serving a twenty-year sentence—with no way to go on with her life, except by changing her name and running away. You can see how well that’s worked for us,” he added, with more than a little sarcasm. “I told her I couldn’t do that to her—it wouldn’t be right. Nothing would ever make it right.”

“Then she said that she and Lillian had talked this all over last summer. Kid, they did it before you gave Lillian that promise ring. Before that—do you realize what that means?”

Kid was unperturbed. “Yeah. It’s like I told you. Our girls are in cahoots. We just have to expect that.” He saw that Heyes wasn’t laughing. “Go on, Heyes. What did they come up with?”

“Paula said, after I made her go on, that she and Lillian had thought about both of those possibilities. There’s not much they can do about us maybe getting killed, except to pray it won’t happen, but us going to prison for twenty years—that’s different. So they talked out what they would do if that happened, whether they were married to us or not.” He paused. “That kind of knocks out my objections to getting married before the amnesty is granted. If Paula’s planning to do all this whether we’re married or not, I can’t protect her. And I’d give my life to protect her.” He stopped, set down the glass, and put his face in his hands with a groan. 

Kid put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. Nobody said anything. After a moment, Heyes finished the brandy and went on.

“Lillian’s already had her house and the restaurant appraised, and all the documents put into Richard’s hands, so he can arrange for a sale. She and Paula would move to Laramie, near the prison, find a house they could share, and Lillian would start up a restaurant. With the Army[1], and the railroad, and the prison staff, and visitors, and the local folks, they figured it should bring in good money. Paula would arrange with her brother to have some of the fully broken young stock sent up there, so she can sell them for officers’ saddle horses. That would bring in more money, enough for them to live on while they do the other things they planned.”

Kid wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but he nodded encouragingly. He could tell from his cousin’s expression that the worst part was yet to come. _You’ve got too much imagination, that’s your problem_.

“She said they planned to come visit us as often as they were permitted to—every day, if possible. If they weren’t permitted at least weekly visits, they would start petitioning the warden, writing letters to the governor, whatever it took.” Heyes paused, looking a little sick. “You know what that involves—they’d probably be strip-searched every time they came. I said I wouldn’t have it—and Paula, my Paula, who’s already promised to obey me … she just looked at me and said I wouldn’t have anything to say about it.” A fleeting smile crossed his face.

“Then, whichever of them wasn’t married yet—say we went ahead and got married and you and Lillian hadn’t yet—she told me they’d petition whoever they needed to so they could get the prison chaplain to perform the wedding. She said it would put them both in a much better position to demand prison visits, and to visit the governor twice a month to petition him for a pardon or a commutation of sentence or whatever it took to get us out of there.”

Hanley nodded. “She is correct. It would put them in a much stronger legal position if they were married to the prisoners for whom they were petitioning. And the idea that a prisoner does not have the right to contract a marriage while incarcerated has been challenged successfully in court.”

“Well, then,” Heyes continued, talking faster now, “Paula told me—she was kind of embarrassed, but I guess she figured if I asked her, I deserved an answer—that once married, they planned to demand ‘conjugal visits’, she thought they were called. So we could, you know, engage in …” Heyes flushed, “marital relations, and make sure there were children born of each marriage, so they wouldn’t be left without children by us, if we really didn’t get released till we were over fifty. I said I didn’t want a child of mine growing up not knowing his father, and she said there was no fear of that, because she would bring the child, or children, with her every time she came to visit. And twice a month, they’d continue to visit the governor and take him a petition, until he probably started to wish that he’d never heard of Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry, let alone failed to keep his promise to us.”

Kid couldn’t help it. He started to laugh. “I’m sorry … I know it ain’t funny, Heyes, but I know whose idea most of that was. I know my Lillie.” _To describe her as stubborn as the day is long would be a serious understatement_.

Hanley and Brubaker looked at each other. “Gentlemen,” said the judge, “your ladies have obviously spent some considerable time on a very well-thought-out plan of campaign, which would have a very good chance of getting you a pardon if you were to find yourselves in that situation and need one. Together with the character affidavits and other documentary evidence that Mr. Curry has told us Miss Wellington and Miss O’More are compiling, to prove that you are no longer committing crimes, it is likely to prove a brilliant success. Even if you are not arrested and sent to prison, the document file they are working on will be invaluable.”

Brubaker added, “Mr. Bancroft and I can probably use those documents to get your amnesty granted sooner; at least to get the railroads and banks to rescind the reward, which would be a beginning. But I have just one question. Where can I find a woman like these ladies the two of you have? I’d get married in an instant if I had that kind of good fortune.”

“We didn’t go looking for ’em,” answered Kid. “They found us.”

“Yes,” Heyes agreed. “But,” he paused, looking first at his cousin and then at the other two men. “I don’t … I mean … I don’t deserve that kind of love and devotion. I’m just a reformed owl-hoot. I’m no hero.”

Judge Hanley stood up, and put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “Son,” he began. “You’re a hero to her, and that’s what counts. Don’t tell me she doesn’t know what she’s getting into if she were to marry you, because it’s obvious that she does.”

Kid was thinking of a conversation he had had with Dr. MacKenzie the previous spring. “Heyes, you were there, weren’t you, when I asked Doctor Mac almost the same question? You remember what he said? He told me I couldn’t deserve it. No man could. All I could do was to fall on my knees—not right then, of course, he said, since my leg was busted,” he added for the others’ benefit, “and thank the Lord for bringing her into my life. I guess he was right.”

“Yeah,” said Heyes, his voice not quite steady. He turned to the judge. “So, your honor, I guess we’re ready to get married whenever you want to marry us.”

Hanley said, gently, “Perhaps we should ask Miss Wellington about that.” He had noted Heyes’s discouraged tone and added, “I hope you are not still averse to the marriage, Mr. Heyes. It almost sounds as though you think she forced you into consenting, and I’m sure she would be distressed at such an idea.”

“Oh, no. She didn’t. She wasn’t even going to tell me about that whole plan unless they had to use it. But she let slip that she and Lillian had planned something, and then said, ‘Oh, you weren’t to know!’ I insisted on her telling me. It’s not her fault. And … of course I want to marry her!” he ended on an indignant note, then blurted out, “It’s just not how I planned!”

Kid Curry snorted in gentle derision. “Didn’t you learn nothin’ in Idaho Springs? Your plans, and my plans, don’t worry the Lord none. He’s got His own.” _Heyes don’t like it when he ain’t in charge_ , thought Kid, _just like last year._ Then another thought occurred to him.“Besides, Heyes, you ain’t thinking about this the right way. Any other fellows in our situation—why, their ladies would leave ’em. Not ours! They love us that much!”

After a long, thoughtful pause, Judge Hanley turned back to Heyes. “Mr. Curry suggested …” He stopped as the door opened and his wife and Miss Wellington came in. Both appeared to have been weeping. An experienced married man, Judge Hanley knew better than to comment on the tear stains.

Paula went straight to Heyes and put her hands on his shoulders, pressing close to him and looking up into his face. “Darling? Is it…? What have you decided?”

“We were just talking about when the wedding should be,” replied Heyes, deciding not to relate to her, yet, what Kid had just said. He had to stop talking at this point, because Paula flung her arms around his neck and kissed him in a very forward fashion. Heyes responded suitably, and then pulled her down onto the settee so they could sit side by side, his arm so tightly around her that she was almost pulled into his lap. “Mr. Curry suggested…?” he prompted the judge.

“I said that you probably don’t want to get married today, or anything that looks like it’s in such an all-fired hurry,” said Kid, “because we don’t want it to look like she had to get married. Her brother would shoot me.” Satisfied that his partner wasn’t going to venture on a retort, he added, “The judge was saying we should wait until Wellington can get here, at least, which’d take about three days, I figure. That puts us at Thursday evening, the first of June.”

Paula looked worried. “Ah … Thursday won’t do.” The men looked at her, questioning. She blushed. “It’ll be my … I mean, it’s not a convenient time. Saturday afternoon or evening would be better; that is…,” she looked up at her betrothed, “if we intend, the night after the wedding … anyway, it had best be Saturday or later.” She blushed more deeply still. 

With no female relatives except a mother who had died when he was only ten, Heyes took a moment to get even a vague grasp of what she was referring to, then blushed suddenly, like a strawberry. He covered this by kissing her again.

“Saturday afternoon will suit perfectly. We can hold the wedding at our home, can’t we, Louisa?” Hanley gallantly stepped in to relieve the younger couple’s embarrassment. His wife nodded. “Good. Then we’ll get started on the arrangements.”

Kid nodded. “I’ve got two telegraphs I need to send, and Heyes … Heyes!” His partner stopped kissing his fiancée and looked up. “So do you. Have telegraphs to send. To Wellington, Lom, you know.”

“Oh, yeah,” responded Heyes. “Yes, of course. I’ll take care of that.” His expression changed to a wide smile tinged with panic. “Kid! I’m getting married in five days! What do I do?”

“You’re askin’ me?” queried his cousin, laughing at him. “You don’t do anything. I’ll make all the arrangements; well, if Mrs. Hanley will help.” The judge’s wife nodded reassuringly. “I can get some advice from Lillie by telegraph. All you have to do is say your vows and not get the words mixed up. And we’ll give you a bachelor party, but we won’t let you get drunk….”

“No, of course not!” Heyes shuddered. He’d had enough of that two years ago, when an old man had died[2] because he and Kid had gotten themselves falling-down drunk. And then another man[3] had had to die when Kid had determined to avenge the old man’s death. Heyes had been afraid his partner was going to die instead, because the other man was faster on the draw than anyone they’d ever seen. And all of that had happened because they hadn’t had the sense to realize that staying sober was probably a good idea, when there was a lot of money involved, and a stranger they barely knew. _Never again, no matter what the circumstances_.

“Anyway, don’t worry about it,” Kid assured him. “We’ll get everything taken care of.”

“Whatever you say,” Heyes agreed, and bent his head to kiss Paula a third time.

“Mrs. Hanley and I would be happy to have all three of you join us for supper in the hotel dining room,” the judge said. “Shall we say half-past seven? You’re invited as well, Brubaker.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Kid. “We accept, with pleasure.” Laughing, he hauled his partner bodily to his feet and pushed him toward the door. “Come on, let’s get over to the telegraph office. We’ve got half a dozen messages to send.”

**May 29th, 1882, 3:00 p.m.**

After sending the messages, they retrieved their room keys from the hotel desk clerk, tipping him as well to bring any messages to their rooms rather than just leaving them in the pigeonholes. Upstairs, Paula paused to unlock her door, but Heyes quietly slipped his arm through hers and obliged her to accompany him to the room he and Kid were sharing. He rarely took an action potentially so prejudicial to her reputation, but he needed to talk to her privately, and in this town, where people didn’t know them and would be curious, he couldn’t just take her out for a ride. His partner could, as usual, chaperon them while she was in their room.

Observing the expression on his cousin’s face, Kid fished a book out of his valise and sat down in the corner to read, pretending to be oblivious to the conversation. 

Paula was exhausted, both emotionally and physically, but she knew there were things that had to be discussed. She eyed her betrothed uneasily. “You’re angry with me?” she suggested.

“No, no,” he reassured her, then stopped. “Well, yes, I am, a little. Just when did you intend to tell me about being arrested when we had to split up and meet in Ashford?”

“I intended to tell you when I rejoined you in Ashford, but when I got there, Kid had disappeared, you were worried about trying to find him, and you were already devising the scheme to get Amy Martin to fall in love with you, so you could get the information you needed from her. I thought that was hardly the time to burden you with such a trifling circumstance….”

“Trifling!”

“Yes, trifling. It would have been different if I had been charged with anything, but that didn’t happen.”

“Don’t you think I had a right to know?” Heyes demanded.

She hesitated. “Perhaps. But as it transpired, it was quite unimportant.”

“That doesn’t matter. This isn’t going to happen again. Is it?” He closed his hands lightly on her shoulders, but thought better of actually shaking her, as he had once done to Mary Cunningham. He had learned much more about dealing with women in the intervening two years.

“You’re right.” She sighed. “As my husband, you will certainly have a right to know, even if it’s not serious. I promise. It shan’t happen again. Will you forgive me?”

Heyes was always thrown off balance when she submitted to his authority so suddenly, especially when they were not yet married and he could only ask, not command. _Not that I plan to make a habit of giving orders to my wife. It wouldn’t work any better with her than it did with the boys in the gang._ “Of course.” 

He hesitated. “Sweetheart, when you said Thursday wouldn’t be a good time … I don’t know if I ought to ask, but …”

“Of course you may ask,” she replied with a smile, “if you don’t mind being embarrassed by the answer. It’s the wrong time of the month. My ‘course’, you know.”

“That’s what I thought. But that means … don’t you usually get a pretty bad headache? I mean, are you feeling poorly now? Do you want me to tell Judge Hanley that you won’t be able to accept his invitation to supper this evening?”

Paula was surprised and touched by his thoughtfulness. “I do often have a severe headache, that’s true, and it will probably come on a little later in the evening, but I think if I lie down a bit before supper, I shall do well enough.”

“Kid, where’s that bottle? Doctor Mac’s ‘Magic Potion’? Didn’t that help before?”

Curry was already fishing the small stoppered bottle out of his valise. The herbal tincture compounded for him by Dr. MacKenzie the previous spring contained equal parts of valerian root, catnip, and willow bark, acting both as a powerful pain reliever and an aid to sleep. He passed it to Paula, who took it with a word of thanks.

Heyes realized that she was watching him with what almost seemed like a worried expression. “Something else is wrong, isn’t it?”

“That depends. I was about to ask you …” She trailed off. They were so close to being married, but the task of communication sometimes seemed more difficult now, not less. She wondered why that should be—perhaps it was her fault for not taking his known likes and dislikes more into account.

“Ask me what?” prompted Heyes.

“Darling, after all the trouble I’ve caused you today, are you … are you sure that you really want to go ahead with this? This week, I mean? I know we’ve told the judge we will, but you can change that if you feel you must.”

Kid Curry waited with interest to hear his partner’s answer to this remarkable development. After the telegraph messages they’d sent, it seemed to him to be a little bit late to think of changing their minds, but he could understand why Paula was worried. Heyes had been so distressed during the interview with Hanley and Brubaker that she might well wonder if he was having second thoughts. Curry knew that Heyes loved Paula and really did intend to marry her, but she was right—the situation was awkward.

“All the trouble _you’ve_ caused? I’m the one who’s…! And of course I want to…!” Abandoning the attempt to explain, Heyes pulled her to her feet and straight into his arms. 

Curry came to his feet and watched the kiss, a little anxious as to whether he would have to intervene. Usually Heyes was careful not to go too far, but this did not appear to be one of those occasions. Glad that the need for his chaperonage would end in five days, Kid stepped forward, putting his hand on his cousin’s shoulder to get his attention. 

The couple broke apart at once. Flushing deeply, Paula stepped back, pressing her hands to her heart for a moment as she caught her breath. “Thank you, Kid.” 

Curry nodded as Heyes seconded the thanks. “Sure thing.”

“I’m sorry,” Heyes said softly. “All I wanted to do was to hold you for a while, to reassure you.” He smiled at his bride-to-be. “Got a little carried away.”

“Darling,” she replied rather shakily, “that brings up a problem.”

Worried, Heyes stretched out his hands to her. She squeezed them briefly and then let go.

“It’s just that … oh, dear, I don’t quite know how to put this without sounding dreadfully forward. If we plan to wait until Saturday evening; that is, if we are to be successful at waiting until then, I can’t …”

“Can’t what?” he encouraged as she trailed off.

“I really can’t risk being in your arms for any considerable length of time. I … I’m not strong enough, I fear, to wait, as God would have us to do, until we are properly married. Not with that kind of temptation.”

Heyes drew in his breath sharply as he grasped her meaning. He remembered, with some astonishment, a conversation he had had with Kid many months earlier, when his partner had expressed concern that the lady Heyes had chosen was so reserved and so formally behaved that she might not be capable of responding to his advances when the right time came. Obviously that was not a matter for concern. He touched the tip of his tongue to his lips as he sought for the words to reassure her.

“You’re saying that you want … that you need me as much as I need you.” He stopped, awed by what he had just said.

“Yes. And I’m very grateful to Kid here—what a difficult task you have had,” she added, turning to their chaperon.

Embarrassed, Curry responded awkwardly, “It don’t matter. I’m glad to do it.”

Heyes made a concerted effort to regain control. “We’ll manage. We’ll be careful.”

She nodded. “Right now, I think I had best go to my room and lie down before supper. Alone,” she added with a twinkle.

Heyes stepped to the door and opened it for her, watching as she walked down the hall and opened her own door with the key. _Five more days_.

* * *

[1] The nearest Army post was at Fort Laramie, over a hundred miles away, but the Army was active all along the east-west Union Pacific rail route.

[2] Seth, the old prospector, in the second-season episode “Smiler With a Gun.”

[3] Danny Bilson, who caused Seth’s death.


	3. Haste to the Wedding--From Telluride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Startled by a telegraph message from Kid Curry, announcing his partner's imminent wedding and asking for help, Lillian O' More has to make decisions in a hurry. Should she send a recipe for wedding cake, or should she try to go herself?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is taken from a Scottish bagpipe tune, "Haste to the Wedding." A good recording may be found here. https://youtu.be/i-rQ9OS6omg

**Telluride, Colorado, May 29th, 1882**

It was a hot Monday afternoon in the last week of May, and Lillian O’More and her right-hand associate, Susanne, were working on making dozens of ham sandwiches, along with a number of jugs of lemonade for the annual “dinner on the grounds” in the town schoolyard the next day after all the speeches and observances for Decoration Day. [1]

“I think that’s all,” said Susanne, letting out a sigh and mopping her damp face with her green-checked apron. “And the cake is already made, so that _should_ take care of our part.”

Lillian nodded, but said nothing, as she was counting. “Twelve dozen,” she announced. “That’s all we need. All we have to do is pack them a dozen to a box, and Mr. Morris will come and collect the boxes to put them and the lemonade into the ice house.” The other girls who worked at the Rose had gone home for the afternoon, and it wasn’t time for any of them to come back yet for the supper service, so the two women felt themselves able to relax for a little while. “I’m not making anything else for a week that involves mustard,” Lillie exclaimed wearily. “I’ll be smelling mustard in my sleep for a week.”

She and Susanne had just made a fresh pot of tea, and helped themselves to the lemonade, when they were startled by a loud series of knocks on the front door. Susanne frowned. “Who in the world could that be? Molly and Emily aren’t coming back until 4:00, and Louise at 4:30.”  
Lillian got up from her chair at the pine worktable in the kitchen, and went to see who was knocking. To her surprise, it was Sammy Delaney from the telegraph office, and involuntarily, she felt herself tense up with worry—the only people who ever telegraphed her were Heyes and the Kid, and when they did, the news usually wasn’t good.

“Telegraph for you, Miss Lillie,” said Sammy, and handed her the yellow envelope. He had a smile on his face, however, which led her to conclude that he knew at least some of the contents of the message.

“Thanks, Sammy. Have a sandwich.” She gestured in the direction of the kitchen. “Tell Susanne I said to give you one.” She ripped open the envelope, standing in the middle of the dining room as she did so.

Susanne was startled to hear her employer suddenly shriek with excitement and dash back into the kitchen. “They’re getting married! Now! Saturday!”

“Wait a minute! Who is?”

In the nick of time, Lillian remembered to say “Joshua” and not “Heyes”. “The telegraph is from Thaddeus, about Joshua and Miss Paula,” she exclaimed breathlessly. “The wedding will be held Saturday, June third, in the judge’s home … oh, my goodness!” She looked around her, almost frantic. “And he has all these questions. I’ll have to remind him to get flowers …”

“I’ll contribute some money for the flowers,” Susanne offered. “I’ll bet the girls will, too. They all like her, from when she was here in the summer.”

“There should be cake,” Lillian said firmly. “I wonder if the chef—if there even is a chef—in that hotel has ever made a wedding cake. I could send Thaddeus the recipe, just in case. And bless him, he doesn’t know about ‘old, new, borrowed, and blue’—at least, I don’t think he does. What could I send to her for the ‘borrowed’ thing?” The silver and turquoise bracelet, a gift from Jed, could do for both ‘borrowed’ and ‘blue’, she reflected.

“Where are they?” asked Susanne, ever practical.

Lillian looked at the yellow slip in her hands once again. “Oh,” she said, “Junction City, New Mexico.”

“And the wedding is scheduled for Saturday?”

“Yes.”

“Then if you sent those things tomorrow, it should get there in time.”  
  


“Sammy, go on back to the telegraph office,” said Lillian. “I’ll have an answer for that message, but it will take me several minutes to compose. I’ll come there shortly, or send one of my girls with it.”

“That’s fine, Miss Lillie. Thanks for the sandwich—that was great!” Sammy Delaney left from the back door of the cafe, whistling cheerily as he went. Lillian had already taken down her most-used cookery book from the shelf, and was searching for the recipe she usually used for wedding cakes.

“Yes, here it is. Bride’s Cake. ‘Cream together one scant cup of butter and three cups of sugar; add one cup of milk, then the beaten whites of twelve eggs; sift three teaspoonfuls of baking powder into one cup of corn starch mixed with three cups of sifted flour and beat in gradually with the rest; flavor to taste. Beat all thoroughly, then put in buttered tins lined with letter paper well buttered; bake slowly in a _moderate_ oven. A beautiful white cake. Ice the top. Double the recipe if more is required.’”

As Lillian returned from the telegraph office, she passed Richard Bancroft’s office, with its sign bolted to the porch railing, stating that this was the office of Richard J. Bancroft, Counsellor at Law. She smiled with pleasure, knowing that she just had to tell him the good news, since he and Hannah were the only others who knew the truth about who “Joshua” and “Thaddeus” really were.

“Lillie!” Her attorney rose to greet her with a warm smile. “What takes you away from your hot stove this afternoon?”

“This.” She smiled back, becoming gradually more excited as she thought about it, and handed over the telegraph from Kid. “Can you believe it? They’re getting married Saturday!”

“Excellent!” he exclaimed as he read the message. “Oh, that’s splendid. That situation has been worrying me for some time, to tell you the truth. I’m glad they’re going ahead with the wedding.” He looked up, his clear blue eyes twinkling with pleasure.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” she said. “Jed is asking all these questions, so I just sent a telegraph back to him with the recipe I use for wedding cake, just in case the cook in the hotel doesn’t have any idea how to do it. And Susanne and I will wire some money to help with getting flowers for the bride, since I’ve no idea if the fellows have the funds to do that, and since I can’t be there in person to give her a gift.”

“A very good idea,” commented Bancroft, while wondering to himself why Hannibal Heyes and his bride were in such haste. _Knowing Miss Wellington, I doubt very much if it’s the usual reason for a hasty wedding … no, surely not._ Then he recalled the telegraph he had received a few weeks before, telling him that Heyes had made a profession of Christian faith and had been baptized—in the Big Thompson River’s spring runoff, of all things. _That must be it. Now that he is a professed Christian, there is no bar for them to marry except for his wanted status._ Then something Lillian said, and her wistful tone, caused him to stop short.

She was talking about sending the couple a gift, and wondering how long they might be in Junction City so the package would have time to arrive, when he looked up. “Look here, Lillian,” he said, holding up a hand to interrupt her, “why can’t you be there yourself? I’m certain that they would be overjoyed to have you present, and your young man would appreciate your help immensely. I’m quite certain,” he added, “that it’s never been up to Kid Curry to organize a wedding.”

Lillian O’More burst into giggles. “No, certainly not! In fact, he sounds quite distracted.” Her expression sobered as she went on. “But how could I go there? I can’t leave …”

Bancroft raised a black eyebrow. “Can’t you?” he asked. “Think about it. Susanne and your girls managed quite competently in January when you were so ill. Why not now?”

Lillian, quite taken aback, paused to consider her attorney’s suggestion. “I don’t know, Richard,” she said slowly. “In January, they had Paula there to help them. Now they wouldn’t. And tomorrow is Decoration Day , too.”

“For which I have no doubt that you are already more than prepared, my dear. And remember, you and Susanne ran the cafe all by yourselves the first year, and you managed very well.”

“Richard, you sound like you’re arguing a case,” she teased.

“I am,” he replied with a satisfied smile, and then his expression grew serious. “You’ve been under a dreadful strain the last year and a half—I have no doubt that is why you were so ill with the grippe. You have never taken a holiday from cooking and managing the Rose, save Sundays. And you’re there day in, day out, from five in the morning to well after the supper hour. So I’m advising you to take a holiday—at once, my dear girl—and attend your best friend’s wedding. See, it isn’t really all that far.”

“It’s not? I confess, I’ve no idea where Junction City is.”

“I’ve heard of it, though I doubt it’s as impressive as its name would suggest.” Bancroft moved over to a large and handsomely framed map of Colorado mounted on the wall of his office. There were map tacks of various colors stuck in it, whose purpose she had never bothered to guess. At the bottom of the map, it showed the Four Corners region, as well as the northernmost portion of New Mexico. “Let’s see … I can show you most of the way there, though Junction City itself would be somewhere about here,” he said, putting his finger on a knot in the panelling a few inches below the map’s mahogany frame.

“I could get there before Friday?”

“Indeed. In fact, you might be able to join the happy couple for breakfast the day after tomorrow, if we’re lucky with the timetables. Now that the rail line is through to Durango, it’s a simple matter, unlike a year or so ago. You would take a stagecoach from here to Durango. There’s a train from Durango that goes to Antonito, Colorado. You would have to get off there and change trains to reach Junction City, see, here where the tracks go south. Come with me to the ticket office, and we’ll check the timetables.”

An hour later, Lillian returned to the Irish Rose, still somewhat in a daze. In that time, her plans had changed completely: instead of sending gifts for the Heyes wedding, she was now sending herself. Richard Bancroft had gone with her to the ticket office at the stage station, and determined that there was a stage at 8:30 that evening which would enable her to catch a train in Durango early the next morning, a Tuesday. Richard’s estimate had not been far off—assuming all went according to schedule, she should arrive in Junction City in time for an early luncheon on Wednesday. She began to apologize to Susanne and the girls, most of whom had now arrived for the evening supper hours, for leaving them suddenly in the lurch, but Susanne stopped her with a warm smile, and shook her head. “You and I have already prepared everything for tomorrow, and as for this evening, the girls and I will manage just fine on our own.” She hugged her employer. “Lillie, don’t worry about anything. Just go home and pack your things and get ready. Your friend, and your poor sweetheart, will be so happy that you are there to help them. You haven’t taken any holiday in years, and the only days you haven’t been working were in the winter when you were so ill. Everything will be fine here, I promise.” 

“Well, all right... you’re sure, Susie?” Filled with a mixture of trepidation and excitement, Lillian went out to hitch up Rosie and go back home to prepare for her sudden unplanned trip.

“Oh, mercy, what do I need to take?” Lillian fretted aloud, having turned Finn out for an earlier-than-usual evening constitutional. Richard had generously promised to take the cross-bred sheepdog home with him to look after in her absence—without having consulted Hannah in the matter. _I do hope she’s fond of dogs_ , Lillie thought to herself with a chuckle. _And he’s quite well behaved on the whole_. He had come into her possession in Denver as a half-grown puppy owing to the fact that he was completely useless at herding sheep, but he made an excellent companion and watchdog for a lady living alone.

What she was wearing, in fact what she wore most days at the Rose—a serviceable twill gabardine dress in a warm gray—would do perfectly well as a travelling costume. It was sturdy, comfortable, and all but indestructible, which came in handy for the head cook in a restaurant kitchen. She had an identical dress of the same fabric in a dusty deep rose color, which she decided to take along for the next day’s travel. Her simple flower-trimmed straw hat would be fine with either dress, as it was early summer. Those two would do for her travels there and back again; now, what to wear in the town, and what to wear for the wedding itself?

That was the dilemma. Having had no idea that she would be needing a dress suitable for her dearest friend’s wedding, particularly if she would be acting as a bridesmaid, she would simply have to make do with what she had. The shops were all shut for the day, and there would probably be no time to do any shopping in Durango before she boarded the train to Antonito. Whether Junction City possessed such a thing as a dress shop or a milliner remained to be seen. Pulling open her wardrobe, Lillian perused the several dresses hanging there. The winter ones had all been bundled away into a trunk with mothballs, so she didn’t have to look through those. There was one gown, which she was very fond of, with a very slim profile in a periwinkle blue. There was one gown, which she was very fond of, with a very slim profile in a periwinkle blue. Paula fancied blue herself, so that might be a good choice … and then there was the leaf-green silk one. She had worn it, and had danced with Jed, at the St. Patrick’s Day dance, and had received compliments on it, but it was still of the particular shade of bright green that some people, she had been warned, considered unlucky. Paula had never indicated that she thought so, so perhaps it would be a possibility for the wedding. For spending time in town, she selected her other pale gray dress and the lavender sprigged blouse that went with it.

Unfortunately, packing five dresses along with anything else she needed was going to be rather a challenge. She pulled out her middle-sized trunk and folded her dresses into it. In the end, she would just have to hope that Paula didn’t mind the lettuce-green silk one, because the periwinkle simply wouldn’t fit. Or perhaps if she brought that one, she could bring only one travelling dress. It was a dilemma. Fortunately, packing her petticoat solved it for her. That one petticoat would work with all the gowns except the periwinkle blue, which would need a different one. That answered that question.

Now, what to bring for Paula? There might be something in the hope chest that would serve. Kneeling down beside her Jenny Lind spool bed, Lillian tugged the old Amana cedar chest out from under it. Until last year, she had not even bothered to open it, much less add anything to it, since well before she had come to Colorado in 1874, since the chance of her ever marrying had grown increasingly remote. The chest itself and many of its contents were heirlooms, so she had never quite brought herself to part with it. In the last year, however, the old cedar chest had become a ‘hope chest’ once again. 

“Oh, I know …” Somewhere in the chest was a matched pair of lamp doilies that she had tatted years ago. About six inches across, they could be easily made into a small round purse if lined with white velvet or satin. If she could find some pearl beads to trim it with, so much the better. Ah, there they were, folded together and wrapped in tissue paper. Yes, those would do nicely, and near the bottom she found an ivory satin chemise that she had made for herself in her girlhood, ten years and two dress sizes earlier. Perfect; there was no chance of her ever wearing that piece, so it could easily be sacrificed to become a bridal reticule for Paula. And the lace on it could go to decorating a veil for her as well. She had nothing in her chest, however, that would do for a veil, which needed some sheer fabric like voile or silk gauze, or even tulle. Well, a place called Junction City would surely have _something_ that would do. 

“We will just manage as we can,” Lillian said to herself. With her trunk packed, she folded the lace pieces and the satin into her traveling bag along with the leather etui that held her tatting shuttle, a few sewing notions and a ball of white thread. The socks she was knitting went in as well, as something to do for the hours on the train. As an afterthought, she snatched the music book _A Garland of Scottish Songs_ off the spinet and tucked it into the bag as well. _One never knows—it might come in handy_.

Promptly at a quarter before eight, Richard Bancroft called at her house to take her to the station for the 8:30 p.m. stage to Durango. “You have money?” he asked, realizing that she had packed and collected herself in such haste that it was quite possible for her to have forgotten such essentials as that in the flurry of preparing for the wedding.

“Oh, yes,” Lillian assured him. “A few dollars in my reticule, and about twenty-five concealed.” A quick gesture toward her bodice indicated where she had concealed it. “I doubt I shall need that, but one never knows what emergencies may arise.” One ought always to be prepared for the necessity of lodging overnight somewhere, if there were to be repairs to the stage, or if the weather became too adverse to go on.

“Once I’ve seen you aboard, I’ll come back for your friend there,” Bancroft said, gesturing to the black-and-brown dog curled on the hearth rug by Lillian’s rocking chair.

“Thank you so much,” she said, “That will be a great comfort to me. Finn McCoul is quite a good dog, really.”

“Oh, I know he is. He accompanies you every evening to the café and back again.” He regarded her baggage which she had arranged in the parlor—there was only one middle-sized trunk, a valise, and her paisley reticule which held everything a lady might need to have readily at hand. “Have you got everything?”

“Yes, almost.” She finished tying up a small bundle in waxed brown paper which contained her supper: a sandwich of bread, butter, and cheese, a piece of cold roast chicken, an apple, and a small bag of shelled walnuts. A pint canning jar held leftover coffee with milk and sugar, which she didn’t mind drinking cold.

At the station, there were a few other passengers waiting for the evening stage. Two young men, one with his arm in a sling, sat playing checkers by the stove. A middle-aged couple, clearly very much in love, sat together on the settee near the window; she was knitting and he was quietly reading aloud to her from a book in his hands. A dour-faced gray-haired lady with a stiff black hat and veil, clutching a long cane, sat on the bench. The last of the group was a fair-haired woman with a small child; from the shape of her Wedgwood-blue gown, moreover, it was apparent that another one was well on the way. The crosswise draping of the overskirt so popular then did very little to conceal her expectant condition, despite the efforts of the dressmaker. At the moment, her little boy was sitting beside her on the bench, playing with a small stuffed-leather horse whose flaxen mane looked to have been cleverly made with ravelled-out rope fibres.

“Seven?” exclaimed the older woman, piqued. “It’s going to be dreadfully crowded.” She gave Lillian a baleful look. “There were only six, plus the little one, until a few minutes ago.”

“I’m very sorry to arrive at the last minute,” said Lillian amicably. “I didn’t even know I was going anywhere until a few hours ago. And I’m afraid I really do have to be on this stage,” she added apologetically. “I simply must make the connection to a train tomorrow morning in Durango.”

“What you in such an all-fired hurry for?” asked the young man with the injured arm. “What’s so special about that train?” His rural accent placed him somewhere in Oklahoma, Lillian guessed. It wasn’t quite a Kansas accent and certainly not a Colorado one.

“It goes to Antonito, where I can catch another train to Junction City in New Mexico, for my best friend’s wedding,” explained Lillian, gathering up her belongings and getting ready to board the stagecoach.

“And you only just now found out about it?” said the other young man. “Guess we know what that means, eh, Zeke?” he said with a vulgar chuckle. “Means it ain’t you that’s in a big hurry, it’s that friend of yours.”

Lillian bristled with fury at the very suggestion. “It most certainly does not! What it does mean is that getting mail through to Telluride is a nightmare at the best of times.” She took a deep breath and went on. “Take that back, mister, and apologize, or so help me, you’ll wish you had.” Had she been able to see herself, the scene in the station looked almost comical, like a fluffy calico kitten challenging a coon hound ten times her size.

“Whoo-ee!” exclaimed Zeke, for apparently that was his name. “Jake, you went and riled up Miss Spitfire here, didn’t you?”

The middle-aged man, soft-spoken, with dark brown hair and even darker eyes, spoke up then. “You know, it’s probably a good idea if you do what the lady says and apologize. There’s no call for that kind of coarse talk,” he said, stepping a little closer.

Jake looked him up and down, and replied, “What you gonna do about it, redskin? Go fetch your tomahawk?” He guffawed.

The older man did not rise to the bait. “I think you may not want to find out.”

With a bad grace, Jake apologized to Lillian, and the strangely-assorted group boarded the stage. With seven adults, there was no way that all of them could ride inside, so one of the male passengers would have to ride on top. As there were only three men, and one of them was injured, it was up to the older man, who introduced himself as William T. Williams, and Jake to take turns riding up top. Since all the seats were occupied, the little boy ended up sitting and playing on the floor of the coach at his mother’s feet.

“What’s your name, little fellow?” Lillian asked.

“This is Robbie,” said the fair-haired woman. “I’m Alice, Alice Chadwick.”

“Robbie, hmm?”

The boy nodded, blue eyes serious-looking behind long lashes. “Me Wobbie.”

“I’ll sing you a funny song about a famous man named Robbie. How would that be?” Lillian smiled and started singing to him.

There was a lad was born in Kyle,  
And whatna day, or whatna style,  
I dout it’s hairdly worth the while  
Tae be sae nice wi’ Robin.  
Robin was a rovin’ boy,  
Rantin’, rovin’, rantin’, rovin’.  
Robin was a rovin’ boy,  
Wi’ a rantin’ rovin’ Robin.[2]

He clapped his hands in glee to hear his own name in a song; Alice frowned, intrigued. “What song is that? I don’t understand most of it, but what’s it about?”

Lillian O’More chuckled. “It’s called “Rantin’ Rovin’ Robin.” It’s a song about Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns—who went all his life by the name Robbie. What’s funny about the song is that it’s by him as well as about him. He wrote it as if it was a story about how he was born.”

“How’s it a funny song if’n you cain’t understand it?” grumbled Zeke from his corner of the stagecoach.

“Well, it _is_ over a hundred years old,” Lillie said, “and it’s in broad Scots. So it takes a little interpretation…” She explained what it meant, and sang the chorus again for little Robbie. 

Robin was a rovin’ boy,  
Rantin’, rovin’, rantin’, rovin’.  
Robin was a rovin’ boy,  
Wi’ a rantin’ rovin’ Robin.

Little Robbie echoed at the end, “wantin’ wovin’ Wobbin.” Everyone but the sour-tempered Zeke chuckled at that.

Alice smiled at Lillian’s efforts to entertain her little son. “I’m sorry, he can’t say his R’s yet.”

“Don’t worry about that,” chimed in the only one who hadn’t spoken yet, the lady who was apparently Mrs. Williams. “He will, all in good time.” At Alice’s confused look, she added, “I’m a teacher. That’s how I know. They figure it out in time.”

The stage rocked and swayed a little as the team put their shoulders into the harness, and then settled down. Lillian took advantage of what light was left to take out her knitting from her travelling bag and make sure that it was all ready to work on. She could certainly knit in the dark, but it was always a good plan to check for dropped or crossed stitches while one still had the light to do so.

Mrs. Williams, the school teacher, was endeavoring to be polite and friendly, and introduced herself as Ruby Williams. “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Williams,” said the elderly lady stiffly. “I’m Sarah Forester.”

“A pleasure, I’m sure.” The two women shook hands like gentlemen as there was no way to curtsy or do anything else in the cramped stagecoach. “It seems as though you’ve had a rough time lately,” Mrs. Williams said in a kindly fashion, addressing Zeke, who was leaning back into his corner of the coach. “What’s happened to your arm? Is there anything we can do to help you?” Her husband gave her a stern look, but she had already made the polite overture that was apparently in her nature.

“Ornery cayuse done flung me into a fence,” Zeke complained. “Busted my arm up and knocked me colder than a trout. They thought I was plumb dead for ten minutes, they did, till I come round again.” He tipped his hat to one side slightly, revealing the edge of a bandage around his head.

“That’s too bad,” Mrs. Williams said. “When was that?”

“‘Bout two weeks ago,” he answered. “Ranch up above Dallas Junction.[3] So me ‘n’ my brother, that’s Jake, we’re headed down south to New Mexico or maybe Texas see if we can’t sign on at some better place than that, once I’m healed up some.”

Mrs. Forester turned to Lillian. “Do pardon my curiosity, dear … but who was that handsome fellow who brought you to the station?”

“Oh, that’s my attorney, Richard, my man of business. He helped me arrange the trip and get the tickets. I suppose, if you like, that it’s his fault I’m the last-minute passenger.”

For a time, all was quiet. The coach bounced and swung in a regular rhythm as the team pulled upward, climbing steadily higher as the road wound out of the valley that held the town of Telluride like a handful of jewels in a teacup.

Ever hopeful, at one point Mrs. Williams attempted to start a round game of “The Minister’s Cat” to pass the time, but it was no use. There just weren’t enough players to carry it out for long. She and Lillian and Mrs. Forester and Alice Chadwick were able to keep it going for a while, though. They had gotten to “The minister’s cat is a _gentle_ cat” before they all got bored and gave it up. All that time they were heading up the mountain road, Lillian had been knitting socks for Kid and watching Zeke out of the corner of her eye.

_I’m not sure what it is_ , she thought to herself, _but something is rotten in the state of Denmark_ , misquoting Shakespeare if she had only known it. _Something’s wrong here … what is it_? Something didn’t ring true. Unable to put her finger on it, she kept knitting in the dark, thinking.

At about 9:30 p.m., the stage stopped in Ophir for a fresh team, water, and a chance to get out of the coach and have a hot meal if they liked. Prudently deciding to save her cash for meals later on the way, Lillian spread out a kerchief and ate her packed supper with satisfaction. She was pleased that she had remembered to grab the several hard-boiled eggs out of the bowl in the icebox on her way out; they would have been spoiled and inedible by the time she returned from New Mexico.

At the stage station, she casually struck up a conversation with Mrs. Williams. “Would you care for some coffee?” said Lillian, offering to share the last of the contents of her pint Mason jar. “It isn’t hot any more, but it’s very fresh.”

“Why, thank you,” said the older woman, who had light brown hair wrapped into a loose bun in the back and held firmly with a tortoiseshell hair comb. “I don’t mind if I do. I think it’s nice and refreshing, even cold.” She held out her travelling tin cup and Lillian poured the last of the coffee into it. “My, this is good! What brand is it? I’ve never tasted anything like it.”

“Confession time,” laughed Lillian with a slight blush. “It’s my own. I own a café in Telluride. Green coffee beans keep indefinitely and roasted coffee goes stale so quickly, so I buy it in fifty-pound sacks and roast it myself as needed.”

“It’s wonderful. We wanted to see Telluride and see what the real West looks like, but we’re not from around here, actually, so I don’t suppose we shall ever get the chance to visit your café. We’re going to celebrate our anniversary in Taos next week.”

“Well, if you ever end up in these parts again, do look me up. It’s the Irish Rose café, if you’re looking for it.” She paused and drew a bit closer, hoping that no one would find that unusual, just a couple of women chatting on a cool night. “Do you find something strange about those brothers?”

The school-ma’am nodded. “Oh, indeed. They’ve already pulled off one thing, anyway.” 

“Really? What’s that?”

“Notice how both of them were _so_ rude and unpleasant to everyone at the beginning?”

“Yes.”

“That was the whole point. They have now made it so that no one is watching or looking at them. Being unconscionably rude makes people look away from them, and they did it on purpose.” Mrs. Williams looked speculative. “I don’t know what they’re up to, but they’re up to something, and they don’t want anyone staring at them.”

Lillian stared at her, eyes wide. “How did you realize that?”

“Teacher’s instinct, my dear. Trouble-making students make a habit of that kind of thing.”

Lillian looked carefully around to see that they were not being overheard. Thinking about what Mrs. Williams had said, it suddenly came to her what had been nagging at her the whole time since they had left Telluride. She sidled closer to the teacher and her husband, ostensibly to pour them some more of her coffee. “He’s shamming,” she said.

Williams was taken aback. “He is? How do you know?”

“My sweetheart—the cousin of the man my friend is marrying,” Lillian elaborated, “was seriously hurt in a bad accident last year. His right leg was broken in two places. He also had a concussion, but a mild one. He wasn’t even knocked out. But I saw him three months afterward, and he was even then in more pain than our friend Zeke who supposedly broke his arm two weeks ago.” _That_ was the fishy thing; Zeke had been sitting there on the opposite seat, leaning back in the corner, and had not evinced any sign of being in the sort of pain that a fractured arm would really have caused him in even a well-sprung stagecoach. “There’s more. My sweetheart, Jed, said he had headaches off and on for a couple of months after that. If this Zeke was knocked out for ten minutes …”

“He’d be too ill to travel,” said Mrs. Williams in a tone of dawning revelation. “Or he’d be dead.”

Her husband nodded, a grim satisfaction in his expression. “Don’t say anything to anyone. Being an obnoxious malingerer isn’t a crime. But let’s make sure one of us is keeping an eye open, hmm?”

“Don’t worry,” said Lillian firmly. “I can knit all night if I have to. Who needs sleep?” Another thought came to her. “Mr. Williams, are you armed?”

“I am not. But I plan to do something about that.”

For her own part, Lillian made her own preparations for some kind of trouble, taking the empty jar which had held coffee and walking down to the bank of the nearby creek. _I wish Jed were here. He’d know what to do._

“All aboard,” called out the driver. “The next water and the next privy are in Rico, sixteen miles ahead.”

Everyone got back aboard, except this time the two able-bodied men changed places: Mr. Williams rode on top of the coach, and Jake came back down inside. Robbie, awakened and carried back on board, began crying and fussing. He wailed loudly, “I don’t _want_ to be in here!”

“Shut up, kid. Nobody else does either,” grumbled Jake. Lillian and Mrs. Williams took it upon themselves to quiet the little tyke. “There’s a tree on a hill, and the hill stood still, and the green grass grew all around, all around … and the green grass grew all around, “ the teacher sang to cheer little Robbie, until he fell asleep once more, half-pillowed on his mother’s lap.

About two hours later, approaching midnight, Zeke sat up suddenly in the corner of the carriage. “Jake! Jake!” he hissed to his brother. “You gotta help me, I gotta get off. I gotta get out, now. Make him stop the coach.” He groaned and clutched his midsection, leaving no one in any doubt what was going to happen. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” wailed Alice softly. “Not in here!”

Jake grabbed the old lady’s cane and banged the curved handle on the roof of the coach. “Stop, I tell you!” he roared, waking everyone inside the coach except for the ones who had never gone to sleep. “My brother’s sick! I gotta get him out!”

The stagecoach stopped with a groan of brakes. Jake jumped out, helped Zeke out, and lurched with him into a thicket of shrubbery near the road. Alice shuddered and looked rather bilious herself.

While she wasn’t looking, Lillian raised a questioning eyebrow toward Mrs. Williams. The school teacher craned her neck to peer out the door of the coach, and silently shook her head. She’d had students pretend to be violently ill before. It wasn’t that hard to recognize.

_So he’s shamming that too_ , thought Lillian. _What’s the point_? And then she had an awful thought, and gripped her reticule firmly. The point, of course, was to get the two brothers outside the coach, and presumably there would be a gang of other men joining them any minute now. _They’re going to rob the coach … Oh, where is Jed when I need him? In Junction City, that’s where_ , she thought irrationally.

The old lady, Mrs. Forester, roused herself from a doze, and held a warning finger to her lips. “Shhh.”

However, nothing untoward happened after all. Jake helped Zeke back into the stage, and even traded places with Mr. Williams on the roof without argument.

The next hour into Rico was quite uneventful, as if nothing strange had occurred at all. _This is awful_ , thought Lillian to herself. _We know—we all know—something’s going to happen. Probably the “brothers” will rob the coach, or make it possible for someone else to. But we can’t call in the law, as no crime has been committed yet, and you can’t arrest people for being up to no good, can you_? She idly wondered if it had felt like this for Heyes and the Kid when robbing a train, waiting and wondering if their fancy dynamite job would work. The unrelieved suspense was maddening, except to Mrs. Forester, who showed no signs of bothering to wake up. _Are these two louts murderers, or just robbers_?

At the stage stop in Rico, everyone disembarked for a water stop and a rest period for themselves and the horses. Alice Chadwick and little Robbie stayed in the coach, however, as he was fast asleep and she had no desire to wake him. Lillian intended to get back aboard soon enough that Alice could walk about and stretch a little herself. The station master’s wife had a mighty kettle of pea soup bubbling on the stove, and fresh bread baked and ready. Lillian contemplated the idea of giving her some of the sourdough starter she had carefully packed away in a jar, but decided against it. She might need that for her original intention—to bribe her way into the hotel kitchen in Junction City to make Paula’s and Heyes’s wedding cake.

She also contemplated telling the station master that she and Mrs. Williams were convinced that Jake and Zeke were intending to hold up and rob the stagecoach— _but who would believe us_? Zeke had bagged the chair nearest the stove and was convincingly playing his role of the poor broken-down cowboy down on his luck. And Jake, in the role of the protective big brother, would not have made anyone think of him as a dangerous character. 

Williams commented _sotto voce_ , as the two ladies stepped out to rinse their hands under the pump before eating, “Good thing they stopped the coach. That would have been …” He grimaced.

“Nothing at all,” said his wife firmly. 

“Nothing? Then he wasn’t really sick.”

“Not a bit. He’s no more sick than you are.” She shook her head. “And if he really had been ill …” She pantomimed waving a hand in front of her as if to dispel a foul odor. “Everyone in the coach would know.”

Mr. Williams frowned, perplexed. “Then why…?”

Lillian had just figured it out. “Well, after that dramatic performance …”

“Now Jake can get the driver to stop the coach any time he wants, in any place. He just has to do that again.” He sighed. “Well, now we know what to wait for. The next time Zeke puts on his ‘let me off the coach’ act, be ready.” He bent low and pretended to wash his own hands. “There’s something else, too. I know what this is all about.”

“Yes, dear?”

“When the driver needed a strong light to check the horses’ feet, Zeke was standing nearby. Too close to a light that bright.” He grinned. “They weren’t careful enough putting the cast on his arm.”

“What does that mean?”

“They didn’t layer the plaster thickly enough, that’s what. When that light was shining there, I could just see a little corner of paper sticking out from the open end of the cast.”

Lillian frowned. “Paper?” That didn’t make sense. You didn’t put paper inside a medical cast. “But why?”

Williams looked from one of the ladies to the other. “It’s a special kind of paper with special green ink. Only a quarter-inch was showing, if that, but I recognized it. No question. I’m a certified accountant,” he added, by way of offering his credentials.

“Money,” Lillian whispered, her heart pounding, practically in her throat.

Williams nodded. “A lot of money. Probably the proceeds of a robbery. No telling how much they’re carrying on them, but I know where they hid it. Inside the cast on Zeke’s arm, where no one would ever think to look.”

“Wait a minute,” said Lillian, “There was a bank robbed in Silverton a week ago, and the robbers disappeared. No one knows where they went.”

“Well, now I think we do know.” He looked around, and went on. “We’d better hurry and get back inside before those boys get suspicious.” Williams stroked his graying moustache thoughtfully. “If I can manage it, I’ll have a word with the station master and have him telegraph to Dolores that we think we have the Silverton bank robbers on this stage. But the driver can’t wait here long enough for help to arrive. We’re on our own.”

Lillian frantically racked her brain for ideas. “What if Alice were to have some difficulty which required a doctor’s care?”

Williams shook his head. “Excellent idea—but the driver still wouldn’t delay his departure. He’d just leave her here and keep going. She could continue her journey on the next stage, or something like that. Come to think of it, though, that’s not a bad thought. Things are likely to get rough, sooner or later. Having her and the little fellow out of the way might be best. Tell her.”

“All right.” The three of them went inside and sat down at the big table for a midnight meal of bread and soup. Lillian derived a little perverse pleasure from watching Zeke suffer hungrily, not getting any of the excellent food, in order to keep up his pretence of being rather unwell due to his injuries and the motion of the stagecoach. Mrs. Forester daintily ate a small portion of both, and declined to comment on or complain about anything. Having finished her own portion, Lillian gathered up a chunk of the bread and a tin mug of soup and carried them out to Alice on the stage. “You’ve got to be hungry, Mrs. Chadwick. There is the most excellent pea soup and fresh bread in the station. I’ve brought some out for you, but you should go and sit down by the warm stove and have some. There’s coffee and lemonade as well. I’ll stay here with Robbie.”

“Thank you, that is most kind. But I don’t want to go in there. That horrid man—I know it’s not kind to say that of a human being in pain, but …”

“About that. He’s not in any more pain than you and I. It’s all a trick—they’re play-acting.”

Mrs. Chadwick stared at her, shocked. “Whatever for?”

“It’s quite probable they’re the robbers who held up the bank in Silverton last week. At least Mr. Williams thinks so. It’s possible they may be planning to rob the stage. We want you to get off here and stay here at the station with Robbie, where you’re safe. Things may become rather unpleasant somewhere between here and Durango.”

“Robbers?” she squeaked. At this, her small son stirred and awakened, thinking his mother had said his name.

“That’s what we think. Maybe nothing will happen—maybe they’re just using the stage and this scheme of theirs to get out of the area without being suspected. But we don’t want you or ‘wee Robbie’ here to get hurt.”

Alice thought briefly, and then shook her head, adamant. “No. My husband is waiting for me in Tucumcari, New Mexico. He’s been trying to find work, and now that he has—in Oneida, Texas—he’s sent for us to join him. I have no way to let him know if we’re delayed, and he would be beside himself if the train arrives and we’re not on it. Besides, how could I have a reason to stay behind here?”

“If you were to make them think that you were having a difficulty? That you needed to see a doctor?”

Alice considered that, and shook her head. “No, no. Let’s just carry on. I’m not terribly good at play-acting, and they wouldn’t hurt a child, surely?” She handed back the mug. “Thank you for the food. It’s very good.”

Lillian nodded. “Very well, then. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Let me go bring some more back for Robbie.”

“Bread and butter will be fine for him. He won’t eat the soup, I know. Peas are one of the things he refuses to touch.”

“All right.” _Well, if she doesn’t want to go, I can’t make her_.

When she went back inside, the driver was looking at his watch. “Time we were getting on the road, folks,” he said. “That extra stop didn’t help us any,” he added with a glare in Zeke’s direction.

The station master’s wife was happy to cut a few more slices of bread, buttering them and wrapping them in a sheet of waxed paper. “And here’s an apple for the little fellow, too,” she said kindly, handing a small paper bag to Lillian, who accepted it with gratitude.

“Oh, that’s lovely, ma’am. Thank you. And your bread is wonderful, by the way.”

Within a quarter of an hour, everyone was back on board and on the road toward Dolores. Mr. Williams had claimed his seat back inside the coach, even though this left Jake on top with the driver and the guard. “Up there, I can’t be much help,” he had whispered to his wife and Lillian as he helped them to their seats. He himself occupied the middle seat, with Zeke on his left and Mrs. Williams on his right.

It was pitch dark now, with the only light coming from the lanterns on either side of the coach and occasional shafts of moonlight piercing through the clouds. Lillian had begun knitting again, but then had followed Mrs. William’s lead and pretended to fall asleep. Before doing so, however, she had made sure to grip her reticule very firmly in her hand. How many hours had passed, she could not guess, but she was nearly falling asleep when she felt the stagecoach rock and come to a halt.

“All right, folks, don’t anybody do anything sudden,” Zeke said sternly, his Okie accent gone and a revolver in his right hand.

_Where did that come from_? Lillie just had time to wonder, as neither of the brothers had appeared to be armed, and then realising he’d concealed the pistol inside the arm sling, when there was a flurry of movement next to her, and across from her, and a howl of pain from the would-be robber. The revolver thudded to the floor of the coach, and Lillie was astonished to see the elderly lady holding a sword to Zeke’s throat, as Mr. Williams smiled with grim satisfaction, gripping the hatchet handle he had just brought down on the robber’s wrist.

“Well done, Mr. Williams,” said Mrs.—or was it Mister?—Forester, in his own natural voice. He would have said more, but at that moment, the door of the coach was jerked open by Jake, brandishing a pistol and leaning into the coach.

“Hey, Zeke—where are you…?” He never finished the sentence, as Lillian saw her chance. She swung her reticule hard against the second robber’s head, and he crumpled to the ground.

Alice Chadwick started to scream, but there was no reason to any longer. With Mr. Williams now holding the pistol on Zeke, “Mrs.” Forester started to laugh. “Well, well … I had no idea I’d have this much help!” he said, pulling off the gray wig and lady’s hat that had disguised him as the irascible widow, and sliding the sword back into the sword cane he’d been using. “Briscoe’s the name, Harry Briscoe, of the Bannerman Detective Agency.” 

* * *

[1] This holiday, begun in several states after the Civil War as an annual observance for decorating the graves of veterans, is now called Memorial Day.

[2] Here’s a recording of this song by Alastair McDonald. <https://youtu.be/t8gfTE66jIw>

[3] Now Ridgway, Colorado.


	4. Harry Briscoe Is Astonished

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coming on the heels of his capture of a pair of bank robbers, Harry Briscoe hears some shocking news.

“Harry Briscoe?” exclaimed Lillian, in a moment of unguarded surprise. “From Denver?”

“Why, yes, ma’am,” the detective replied. “But … I don’t believe we’ve met, have we?”

“Er, no,” she said, hastily recovering herself. _Oh, dear_ , _how do I explain that_? “I do believe we have mutual acquaintances, Mr. Briscoe, so I’ve heard about you.”

“Mutual acquaintances, eh? I see …” he began, only to be interrupted by the stage driver and the guard, who had jumped down from their seats above. 

“Say, Mr. Briscoe, you folks all right in there?”

“Yes, indeed! With the competent assistance of these courageous citizens,” said Briscoe, as he drew his own gun and herded Zeke out of the stagecoach.

“What the devil happened to _him_?” asked the driver, bemused, seeing Jake on the ground in a crumpled heap. “He was fixin’ to make us give up the strong box.”

“ _She_ did,” grumbled Zeke, pointing to Lillian. “She decked him with that little bag of hers.” He sat down on the ground, at gunpoint, while Briscoe tied him up. The driver and the guard crouched down to tie up Jake, after taking his revolver.

The driver eyed Lillian, impressed. “What’ve you got in that bag, lady, a brick?” he asked, after seeing the large bump rising on top of the robber’s head. “That’s the biggest goose egg I ever saw.”

“Well, when I left home it was a pint jar of coffee,” said Lillian. “But I couldn’t see wasting perfectly good coffee on miserable cowards like them, so now it’s just creek water and gravel.” She fished the canning jar out of her bag. “You can have it, I suppose, as Exhibit A, though I was hoping to fill it up with coffee again in Durango. See, it isn’t even cracked.”

“Unlike him,” said the guard. “I dunno, lady, but you might have killed ’im. I’d be surprised if his head ain’t stove in.”

She looked apologetic. “I hope not, but it was the only thing I could think of. My fiancé told me once that a full beer bottle is a better weapon than an empty one.”

Briscoe raised a quizzical eyebrow. The demure, brown-haired young woman did not look like the sort of lady who consorted with fellows given to brawling in a saloon, but he said nothing.

“No, he’s not dead,” said Mr. Williams, kneeling to check on the hapless Jake, who looked much less intimidating in his current condition. “Though I suspect he’ll wish he were—he probably has a concussion. But we should be getting some help before long,” explained Mr. Williams, scooping up Jake’s fallen hat from the ground. “I told the station master in Rico to send a wire to Dolores telling someone there to send the marshal and a posse, because we thought that the robbers from Silverton were on this stage. They’ll look after him once they’ve arrested these owl-hoots.”

Briscoe stared, goggle-eyed, at Williams and at Lillian both. “How did you know it was them?”

“I didn’t,” said Lillian, “but I knew there was something fishy going on and that Zeke’s arm wasn’t really broken—the left one, I mean,” she said, as it was clear that now his right arm was indeed broken. “So I made sure I had something to defend myself with, and I filled my jar up with water from the creek when we stopped after Ophir.”

“It looks as if there were three different plots going on here,” Briscoe commented. “Their plot, my plot, and the one you folks cooked up on your own.”

After Williams explained that he’d managed to see Zeke’s arm cast was full of paper money under the plaster, all was more or less clear. By this time, Jake was coming around and groaning with pain, clutching his aching head, and expressing himself in language quite unsuitable for the ears of ladies or small children.

“Well, let’s get everyone back inside the coach where it’s warm, and we can leave these yokels here tied up until the marshal turns up with the posse,” said the driver, checking his watch.

“Can’t do that,” said Harry Briscoe, having taken a minute in the shrubbery to remove his old-woman disguise. “These criminals have the proceeds from the Silverton robbery on their persons—can’t leave them alone with that, can I? So either we can get back on the road, and bring them along, tied up, or I’ll have to stay here with them until the posse arrives from Dolores, however long it takes.”

After some discussion, it was agreed to continue on, only with Zeke tied up and riding on the top of the coach with the guard, and Jake, also tied up, in the coach, guarded by Harry Briscoe.

Feeling safe at last, Lillian tucked away her knitting, wrapped her shawl around her, and slept.

In the morning, the stage arrived in Durango, minus the two fleeing bank robbers. They, and statements about their actions from the other passengers, had been left with the marshal in Dolores. Following that, not only had there been considerably more room in the coach, but everyone aboard had felt more cheerful and at ease without Jake and Zeke’s presence. 

Lillian collected her baggage at the stage depot, and had it set aside to be loaded onto the train for Antonito. It would be two and a half hours before the train arrived, she discovered, so she would have time for breakfast somewhere as well as for her other errand—to find things for the wedding. Chief among the things she wanted to find was some sort of veiling fabric: perhaps tulle, or lawn. It was possible, of course, that Paula had a veil already, in which case the fabric would no doubt be useful in some other way. And if Paula had not already provided herself with a bridal veil, then it could be Lillian’s gift to her, along with the small satin and lace reticule. What she didn’t know was where, if anywhere in Durango, fabric of that kind could be bought. If possible, she wanted to buy it here, so she could work on it in the train, not trusting to being able to find what she needed in Junction City, a town of which she knew nothing.

Standing outside the station, she was pondering how she could solve that, when a masculine voice spoke up behind her. “Miss O’More?” he said, and she turned around to see the Bannerman detective, Harry Briscoe, standing on the platform tipping his hat to her.

“Yes?”

“I wondered if I might trouble you by asking a few questions,” he asked her, very politely.

_I remember Jed saying that Briscoe was nice enough, but an odd duck_ , she thought. “That depends, rather,” she replied, equally politely. “You see, I really must find something for breakfast, and I have an important errand to perform as well, before my train departs at 10:20. Now, if you were to help me locate those things, then I’m sure I would have time to help you with your inquiries.” _There, Mr. Briscoe_ , she thought. _How badly do you want to ask me those questions_?

“I would be most happy to be of assistance to a lady like yourself,” he answered. “What is the nature of your errand?”

“I am travelling,” she explained, “because I am on the way to my dear friend’s wedding, as you may have heard me say in the station in Telluride. I want to find a shop for fine fabrics, if there is such an establishment here in Durango. I am looking for gauze, or voile, or something suitable for a bridal veil. I don’t know if my friend has one, so I plan to make one for her.”

“I see,” said Briscoe, thinking. “Well, as it is now only 8:15 in the morning, I propose that we have breakfast straight away, by which time the shops will be open, and we can make enquiries about your errand. There is an excellent eating-house nearby, which I have frequented before when in the area, called the Copper Kettle.” He offered her his arm. Leaving the railway depot after having ascertained that Mrs. Chadwick, who was also waiting to board the train to Antonito, did not wish to accompany them to the café, they walked down the street.

_They will never believe this,_ Lillian thought as she accepted Briscoe’s invitation and his escort. _I am having breakfast in Durango with Harry Briscoe, of all people._ Suppressing the temptation to giggle, she walked with him to the café that he had mentioned. She could see the sign for the place suspended above the sidewalk, featuring a painting of a large copper kettle with swirls of steam emanating from its interior.

Entering the café, Lillian surveyed it with the practised eye of the experienced _restaurateuse_. The tablecloths seemed to be clean, and the freshly swept white-painted floors silently advertised the absence of either rodents or roaches on the premises. The waitress was both polite and clean, and attended to them briskly and without fuss. Lillian ordered a simple mushroom and cheese omelette with buttered toast and half a broiled grapefruit.

Briscoe ordered a pan-fried steak with biscuits, gravy, and eggs. They talked of inconsequential things such as the weather until the food came. He devoured his with typically masculine enthusiasm, and for her part, she found the omelette to be quite satisfactory. After the waitress had cleared the plates away and brought them coffee with cream and sugar, Briscoe leaned forward intently and fixed his attention on her.

_Here it comes,_ she thought. 

“Miss O’More, I know that you made a statement to the marshal in Dolores about your part in foiling the stagecoach robbery by the Dyson brothers. But as a detective, you understand, I’d like to ask you for a more detailed account—if it’s no trouble to you?”

_Well, he’s been quite decent really, and has taken me to breakfast into the bargain, so I suppose I don’t mind._ “There really isn’t much to tell,” she said. “After all, you were there as well, at the Telluride depot, so there was nothing I saw that you didn’t. How did you come to be there, if I may ask?”

“Ah, well, ever since the Silverton bank robbery, the Bannerman agency has been putting a man on every train and stage leaving that area, especially if there was a pair of youngish men on board who didn’t seem to know anyone else travelling with them. We knew that they had to make their getaway somehow, so all the roads and passes out of Silverton have been watched since the robbery occurred. They even brought Hannigan and me over to the Western Slope from the Denver office.”

“Oh, I see,” she exclaimed. “So you didn’t know if those two men were the robbers, or not.”

“No, only that the station agent had telegraphed us about two young male passengers who weren’t from Telluride.” He took out a small black leather-bound book from his pocket and the stub of a green pencil. “You said that you realized very soon that they weren’t what they claimed to be, but you didn’t elaborate on that. Would you mind explaining it to me? Just a matter of professional curiosity, you understand.”

“Well, I didn’t think the marshal in Dolores would be interested in that,” she began. “But it was like this. I saw that one of them, Zeke, had his arm in a sling, with a plaster cast on it. If he had said nothing about it, I wouldn’t have thought anything was unusual.” She paused, trying to articulate what her train of thought had been the evening before. “But, you see, last year my betrothed, my sweetheart at the time, had a bad accident and suffered both a fractured leg and a concussion. I wasn’t there when it happened, as we don’t live in the same town, but he told me in letters how very hard it was for him. Even being taken in a buggy for a few blocks, a week after it happened, was horribly painful—every jolt, every rut, jarred both his leg and his head.”

“Quite understandable, I’m sure,” remarked Briscoe, making a few notes in his little book. “I hope your young man was able to recover from his injuries,” he added solicitously.

“Yes, he has recovered very well indeed, though it was some months before he stopped having periodic headaches. Anyway, because of that, when Zeke started telling about being thrown into a fence two weeks ago, I knew he wasn’t telling the truth. Either he had made a truly miraculous recovery in such a short time, or ... or there was nothing wrong with him at all. There we were, rocking and bouncing in that stagecoach, on that narrow road, and he with a cast on his arm and a bandage on his head—yet he showed no signs of being in pain.”

“Ah. That was what gave him away, then.”

“Yes. If he had said nothing about what had happened to him, anyone would think it had happened some time ago and his arm was nearly healed. But when he started embroidering it with details, including that he’d been knocked out for more than ten minutes—well, that’s just not possible. If that were really true, he’d be still in hospital, or laid up in bed, not riding stages to Durango and points south looking for a job.” She sipped at her coffee and shrugged. “That’s really all there was to it. I knew he was lying about that, so what else was he being untruthful about? And then the Williamses observed some other things that made us even more suspicious. So I set about making sure I had at least _some_ sort of weapon to hand. The pint jar was the only thing I could think of; my embroidery scissors are less than an inch long, and I don’t carry a derringer or anything like that.”

“Very resourceful, I’m sure.”

“I had to improvise. I didn’t think the glass would crack, but if it did, I had no intention of wasting good coffee. So we drank up the coffee and I refilled the jar with stream water and gravel when we stopped just after Ophir to water the team.”

“That’s all? They didn’t look familiar to you?”

“No, not at all. But then I’m not from Silverton; I live in Telluride.” By this time, they had left the café and were walking up the street, busy with passers-by and already warm in the sunny May morning.

“There is a mercantile and dry goods emporium in the next street, if I recall correctly,” said Briscoe. “Perhaps they will have the sort of thing you need for this wedding.” Indeed they did, and Lillian quickly purchased half a yard each of a soft white voile fabric and an ivory-colored sheer organza, as well as additional thread, a paper of pins, and another of needles, while Briscoe politely waited for her.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Briscoe,” she said frankly. “I’ve never been to Durango, so I would not have known where to go, and I would have wasted a good deal of time trying to find somewhere to buy these things.”

“Not at all, my dear lady,” he replied. “As we go back to the station, however, I am hoping you’ll enlighten me on one other point.”

“Certainly, if I can.” _Now for the sticky bit. I’ll bet I know what he’s going to ask me next._

“You remarked earlier, ma’am, that you knew my name because we have mutual acquaintances. Who might they be? I do travel around quite a bit, you know, in my line of work.”

“Well, I don’t suppose you know them very well,” she said, “but you _do_ know them. It’s my betrothed and his cousin. In fact, the wedding I’m going to is the cousin’s wedding. I’ve become close friends with the lady the cousin is going to marry. They’re very clever and resourceful gentlemen. A Mr. Joshua Smith, and my intended, Mr. Thaddeus Jones,” she added sweetly.

Briscoe’s reaction was all she could have hoped. He stopped in his tracks, so fast that he nearly fell off the boardwalk. “ _Smith and Jones_?” he exclaimed, his eyes wide with shock.

“Yes, that’s right. You do know them?”

“Indeed I do, dear lady,” Briscoe said, and then dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper. “But—I _must_ ask this—do _you_ know them?” Normally it would not cross his mind to blow the cover of the two outlaws, who were his friends, but the very idea of a lady, clearly a lady, marrying either of those rogues unawares was too appalling to contemplate unmoved.

“Of course I do, Mr. Briscoe.” Lillian smiled. She could continue teasing the detective, but it wasn’t really playing fair. “Yes, I do know. And that’s why we aren’t married yet. But, some day, you should be able to tell your grandchildren that you apprehended the Silverton bank robbers with a little bit of help from Mrs. Jedidiah Curry.”

“And your friend ... she does know that she’s marrying ... _Hannibal Heyes_?” He was still whispering. Even as he said it, the very idea was so impossible as to border on absurdity.

“Oh, yes. Though this wasn’t the original plan, I must say. I don’t know why the sudden change in plans—I suppose something must have gone sideways. No doubt I’ll find out when I get there.” A thought crossed her mind. “The only thing I _do_ know is that it can’t possibly be what that nasty-minded young man was suggesting. It’s quite impossible.”

_No, Hannibal Heyes is a gentleman_ , Briscoe thought, that idea never having occurred to him before. Then his mind went back to what Miss O’More had explained to him earlier, following breakfast. “Wait a moment ... what you were saying about your betrothed having been hurt—a fractured leg, you said. Is that true? About ...” he cleared his throat, “about Mr. Jones, I mean?”

All teasing aside, Lillian’s expression grew sober. “Every word, Mr. Briscoe. Yes, he was badly injured. But he’s doing very well now, thanks to an excellent doctor in Idaho Springs, whom I hope to meet someday, to our good Dr. Hoogendyk in Telluride, and mostly to Jed’s own sheer stubbornness and months of hard work on his part.”

Briscoe frowned a moment. “That’s his real name? The Kid? I never knew what it was. But you’re saying he’s all right now?”

“Yes. Thank you for asking. He resembles his description even less now than he did earlier, as he has a scar above his right eyebrow,” she added. “But otherwise it’s _almost_ as if nothing happened.” Lillian said ‘almost’ because she still was aware that the taut powerful grace with which Kid had once moved, even just to walk down a street, wasn’t _quite_ there any more, only an echo of it. Dr. Hoogendyk had said that would eventually be remedied, but there was still a lot of work to be done. She eyed the station clock, and knew she had to be on her way. “Forgive me, Detective, but I must be going. I don’t dare miss that train.”

“Oh, certainly not,” he replied. “Do, though, let me write a brief note of felicitations for the happy couple.” Suiting the action to the words, he borrowed a pen from the ticket agent’s window, and wrote a short message for the soon-to-be married couple. “Please convey this to them with my congratulations and best wishes for their happiness.”

“I certainly will. It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”

“The pleasure was all mine, Miss O’More.” Briscoe tipped his hat to her once again, and they went their separate ways: she to the train depot, and he to the telegraph office.

_My goodness,_ that _was much more excitement than I was anticipating,_ she thought to herself as the train to Antonito chuffed and huffed its way out of the station. It was difficult to imagine that only about twelve hours had passed since she had boarded the stagecoach in Telluride. She had gotten so little sleep the night before that now the warm morning sun through the window lulled her into a pleasant doze in spite of her knitting, the jar once more filled with fresh coffee, and her desire to admire the scenery she had never seen before.

**Wednesday, May 31st, 11:00 a.m.**

_Well, here I am_ , thought Lillian O’More as she disembarked at last in Junction City, New Mexico Territory. _How do I find everyone?_ She decided that the best place to start was at the nearest hotel. If there were more than one, that might pose some difficulty, but it only made sense that everyone involved with the Wellington-Heyes wedding would be in the same hotel. 

Once she had retrieved her baggage from the train, she asked the station master about the hotels in town.

“There’s only one, Miss,” he replied, pointing down the street to a sign, just visible at the next corner. “There’s a wedding taking place on Saturday, and apparently all sorts of folks are comin’ in from out of town, but they should have room.”

Lillian nodded briskly and extracted money from her reticule. “Then I shall need to have my luggage conveyed to the hotel, if you please.”

“Of course, Miss. If you care to walk down to the hotel and register, I’ll bring the trunk and valise after you in just a few minutes, after this train pulls out.”


	5. Haste to the Wedding--From Estes Park

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heyes's and Kid's friends converge on Junction City for the unexpected wedding.
> 
> Note: a tiny additional scene was added to the end of this chapter on December 4th, 2020.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Casting:  
> Pete Duel as Hannibal Heyes  
> Ben Murphy as Kid Curry  
> Jack Albertson as Judge Hanley  
> Angus Duncan OR Adam West as Chester Brubaker, Counsellor-at-Law  
> DeForest Kelley as Allan MacKenzie  
> James Drury as Sheriff Lom Trevors (We have assumed that Trevors is somewhat older than James Drury was in 1971—possibly about forty years of age—and that his voice sounds a little bit more like that of Mike Road, who portrayed Trevors in two later episodes and did the voice-over at the beginning for the majority of the episodes. Except for the voice, Mike Road is too old to play a man who was a good friend of Heyes’s.)  
> Jessica Stroup as Paula Wellington  
> Richard Long as Richard Bancroft, Counsellor-at-Law

**C Bar W Ranch, northeast of Estes Park, Colorado, May 29th**

Paul Wellington paid the telegrapher in the tiny settlement of Estes Park an extra sum each month to send a man out to the ranch with any telegraph messages as soon as possible after they were received. There were never very many, but when they came, they were likely to be important. He saw the rider coming up the short track that communicated with the main trail to Devil’s Gulch and the lower canyon of the Big Thompson. Setting down the newly cleaned saddle he had been about to return to the tack room, he walked forward to meet the messenger.

“Come inside, Nick! There’s coffee, and I believe Ellen has just taken a batch of oat-cakes out of the oven. Help yourself while I see if this needs an answer,” he said, opening the yellow envelope as he spoke.

The messenger, who had seen the telegraph form before it had been stuffed hastily into the envelope, grinned. “I think you’ll find it needs some kind of an answer. But I’ll take you up on that offer of coffee and oat-cakes.” He went on into the kitchen through the back door from the central yard. 

Wellington hadn’t even heard him—he was reading the brief message from his sister again, in increasing astonishment. While he read, trying to grasp the sense of the message, the sound of a horse ridden at a gallop penetrated his awareness. He looked up and saw a second rider turning into the lane that led to the house and outbuildings.

“What is it?” Recognizing one of the other men sometimes employed in bringing telegraphs to the ranch, Paul feared some new, equally astonishing development.

The man swung down from the saddle and held out another yellow envelope. “This came in about twenty minutes after that one from Miss Wellington. It’s from …”

Snatching the envelope and ripping it neatly open at the side, Paul verified the sender for himself: Joshua Smith. _She sends a message asking me to come at once and bring the contents of her cedar chest, with no explanation except that they are being married on Saturday: she assumes I’ll understand! If I know Heyes, this should therefore be a formal, if belated, application for my permission, just as if he had planned the whole thing as a surprise._

Gathering his wits sufficiently to tell the second man about the coffee and freshly baked oat-cakes, Paul went into the house, laying the two telegraphs on the desk in his study and pulling out a pad of blank Western Union forms to compose the necessary replies.

> ESTES PARK COLO 0100PM MAY 29 1881
> 
> MISS PAULA WELLINGTON 
> 
> JUNCTION CITY N MEX
> 
> LEAVING WITHIN HOUR STOP ANTICIPATE ARRIVAL JUNCTION CITY BY WEDNESDAY EVENING AS RAIL SCHEDULES PERMIT STOP LOOKING FORWARD TO HEARING ALL DETAILS STOP
> 
> PAUL WELLINGTON ESTES PARK COLO 1257PM

> ESTES PARK COLO 0103 PM MAY 29 1881
> 
> JOSHUA SMITH ESQ 
> 
> HOTEL JUNCTION CITY N MEX
> 
> CERTAINLY YOU HAVE MY BLESSING STOP WITHDRAWING FUNDS FROM SPECIAL ACCOUNT FOR YOU STOP INTERESTING CHANGE OF PLANS STOP
> 
> PAUL WELLINGTON ESTES PARK COLO 0100 PM

Reading these over, Wellington decided he couldn’t do any better at short notice, if the messages were to be sent off this afternoon. Quickly he wrote out another telegraph, this one addressed to the small hotel in Boulder which enjoyed his patronage when he stopped there on business trips to Denver, warning them that he would be arriving late that evening and would require accommodations for himself and Jamie Ramsey, three horses, and a light wagon. It had occurred to him just in time that Jamie could well make the drive with him, returning with a wagonload of supplies for the ranch, while a saddle horse could be left at the livery stable in Boulder to await Wellington’s return from New Mexico. A fourth message, to the ticket office of the railroad, arranged for rail travel between Boulder and Denver, where he would change to a D&RG train for the run to Albuquerque.

Folding the telegraph forms in his hand, he went to the kitchen to give them to the messenger, and to inform Ellen Ramsay, formerly their nurse and now their housekeeper and cook, of what was happening. She would probably want to send something along for Paula; in fact, it would be all he could do to keep her from demanding to accompany him. As he walked through the stairwell to reach the kitchen, he heard the rattle of wheels outside. _Another visitor?_

Jack Carson, a small-scale rancher from a couple of miles down the valley to the south, was already in the kitchen talking to Ellen when Wellington entered. “You understand, Mrs. Ramsay … there’s no one else, and she’s before her time. I’m afraid for her and the child, if we can’t get some help.”

“Aye, Mr. Carson. For certain I will come,” responded Ellen, her soft Highland accent more noticeable under the stress of the moment. “I’ll just be getting some things I will need for the next few days.” She pushed the oat-cakes, warm from the oven, toward the distraught young husband, and turned to Paul, who smiled and handed her the two telegraph messages.

“You’ll want to see these. I don’t know precisely what’s going on yet, but I’ll be leaving tonight—within the hour, if I can.” He handed the written message forms to Nick Johnson, together with the money to send them. “I think you’ll be leaving here before I can get away. If you could just see to it that these are transmitted this evening, I shall be most grateful.”

A stifled shriek from Ellen interrupted him. “Och, my wee lamb! Getting married so suddenly, and it’s so far away … and I cannot go, I just cannot!” She looked back at Paul. “You’ll be taking her bridal clothes? They’re in the cedar chest that Jamie and Dougal took up to the storeroom more than three years ago.”

“Yes, I’m taking the whole chest, rather than risk being told that I’ve forgotten the very thing she needed.” He put his arms around Ellen’s shoulders as she cast herself on his chest. “Don’t worry yourself, now. I’ll see to everything as best I can. And I’m sure there’s nothing wrong. This might have something to do with Joshua being previously acquainted with Judge Hanley.” With the three local men in the kitchen, none of whom was familiar with Joshua Smith’s true name, he couldn’t say anything more specific.

“Och, well, there will be nothing wrong. _Is math sin, gu cinnteach_ ,” she added, slipping into her native Gaelic. “It’s good, for certain. I would be wishing to be with her, that’s all. You’ll get the whole story from that rascal Joshua when you see him.”

“That I shall. I agree—it’s good news.”

“And make sure …” Ellen gripped his arm suddenly. “You must make sure to take the wee packet that was sent to her from your cousin in France.”

“Wee packet?” queried Paul, all at sea. He followed Ellen as she stepped into the pantry and began collecting items that might be needed for a premature birthing, holding a canvas bag for her as she packed.

“Aye, your cousin Jeanne Morag sent her a letter and the packet in 1878, right after Miss Paula wrote to tell her about the solar eclipse, and the pair of you being on the train in Wyoming when it was held up. I dinna ken what’s in the packet, and neither does she. She read the letter, exclaimed something I didna catch about it being very much too soon for a bridal gift, and put the packet away in the cedar chest, unopened.”

“In that case, it should still be there. I’ll check. Now I must get packed, and so must you. You’ll be leaving before I will, so go with God, and take care. I’ll pray for you, and for Mrs. Carson and the baby.”

“And you’ll be telling Miss Paula and … and _e-fhèin_ —himself, that I’ll be praying for them, and that I wish I could come?”

“I’ll tell them.” Wellington gave her a quick hug, and a kiss on the cheek, receiving one in return, and turned away to call out the back door of the house for the Ramsay boys, whose help he would need in harnessing a pair to the wagon and getting the cedar chest down from the upstairs room where it had been stowed.

**Union Station, Denver, Colorado, Tuesday, May 30th**

On the platform of the magnificent Union Station, built the previous year, a spare middle-aged man with graying dark brown hair and bright blue eyes watched as the train from Cheyenne slowed and came to a stop. Passengers going no further than Denver disembarked, and others who were going on south stepped from the train briefly to stretch their legs. 

Among these latter was a tall, broad-shouldered man with striking gray-green eyes and a dignified bearing, a law officer’s badge pinned to his vest. He bent his head to light his pipe, but then his gaze fell on the man waiting to board. “Doctor MacKenzie! That’s right, isn’t it?”

The middle-aged man came forward quickly. “Sheriff Trevors? I thought I recognized you. I take it you’re on your way down to New Mexico to see our young friend married?”

“That’s right,” replied Trevors. He broke off, realizing that another man, well within earshot, who had been waiting on the platform with a large cedar chest and a smaller trunk at his feet, was coming toward them.

“Lombard Trevors of Porterville, Wyoming? And Doctor Allan MacKenzie of Idaho Springs?” The young man held out his hand. “You don’t know me …”

“No, but I can sure take a guess,” drawled MacKenzie, his Southern accent more pronounced. “You’re Miss Paula Wellington’s twin brother, aren’t you? The resemblance is remarkable.”

“Yes,” replied Wellington, laughing. “My sister told me to bring the contents of her cedar chest. I thought it wiser to simply bring the chest, so there it is. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He lowered his voice. “Heyes and Kid have talked so much about both of you gentlemen.”

“Yeah, I can imagine,” said Trevors morosely.

“No, on my honour, there was nothing bad about either of you. And I understand it’s you we have to thank that Curry can walk without a limp,” he said warmly to the doctor. “In addition to a great deal of prayer.”

“He was well prayed for, that’s for certain. He has no limp? You’ve seen him recently?” asked MacKenzie eagerly.

“Saw him two weeks ago, when they were up at the ranch. There’s no sign of an injury. The leg appears to have healed perfectly.”

After seeing that MacKenzie’s and Wellington’s luggage was properly stowed, the men entered the passenger car and chose a seat which could be reversed so that they could sit together on the facing seats and talk privately.

**Wednesday, May 31st, 9:00 a.m.**

As the train slowed to a stop beside the platform in Junction City, the three men gathered their personal bags and prepared to descend. Having ascertained from the conductor that there was unlikely to be anybody at this little station who could act as a porter, Wellington went to the baggage car and heaved out the trunk in which he had packed his own clothing and the extra day dresses he had brought for his sister.

Turning to deal with the cedar chest, he found Lom Trevors already lifting the handle at the opposite end. With a nod of thanks, Paul accepted the help. They carried the chest down the street to the hotel, intending to return later for the trunk. Dr. MacKenzie accompanied them with his own and Trevors’s valises.

A familiar figure came through the hotel doors. “Lom!” Kid Curry exclaimed. “Doctor Mac! I never thought you’d come,” he added to Lom, somewhat awkwardly. “Here, let me get that!” He took hold of the handle on one end of the chest, shouting over his shoulder, “Joshua, come and lend a hand!”

Heyes stood up from the corner where he and Paula had been sitting and talking quietly. They could not seem to get enough of each other’s company now. Paula accompanied him, even before she had seen the new arrivals.

“You brought the entire thing! Oh, thank you!” she exclaimed, seizing her brother in a quick, uncharacteristic hug. “You’re the best brother I could ever have!”

Since he was her only brother, Paul thought this a trifle peculiar, but that was nothing compared to the shock—a pleasant one, to be sure—that he felt upon getting a good look at his sister’s face. Something in her expression—in her eyes, which were now resting once again on the face of her betrothed—was different. He had never in their lives seen her look as she did now. Wondering what his prospective brother-in-law had been up to, he looked from her to Heyes and back again.

Heyes stopped helping his partner with the chest and straightened up, watching the meeting between brother and sister. He sensed that something was happening. Something amiss? Perhaps Wellington, who did not yet know the reasons behind their sudden decision to wed, suspected him of having done something he shouldn’t. He drew a breath, preparing to defend his lady and himself, then realized that neither of the twins was paying him any attention.

“Paula?” Under the pressure of the moment, Paul dropped into their second native language, Scottish Gaelic. As she met his gaze, her face radiant with joy and some other stranger emotion, he continued, “ _Tha mi a’ tuigseann a nis. ‘S e—e-fhein—am fear ceart gu fireannach_. I understand now. He—himself—really _is_ the right man.” He nodded toward Heyes. “The one you’ve been waiting for these three years. God be praised.”

“ _Tri bliadhna? Tri bliadhna dheug!_ Three years? Thirteen years! All my life—forever! _A chaoidh_!” Paula was a trifle puzzled, because surely he knew that already, had known it since he had written that same phrase—‘the right man’ in the note sent to Ellen in January of the previous year. She said so. “What are you getting at, Paul? You knew …”

“It’s not that,” he replied. “There’s something strange about you now.” He suddenly realized that the other four men were standing well within earshot, knowing nothing of the Gaelic, and that he was, by the exquisitely courteous standards of his mother’s Highland forebears, being rude in speaking an unknown language in front of them. He turned quickly to Heyes and added in English, “That chest is Paula’s. She’ll tell you where she wants it. I must go back to the station and get my own trunk.”

“I’ll come with you to unlock my room,” she said, leading the way to the stairs. Heyes and Kid followed with the chest.

Trevors turned to accompany Wellington back to the station. “Maybe you could sign us all in, Doctor. Tell the clerk we’ll be right back.”

In Paula’s hotel room, the men set down the cedar chest in the corner she indicated. She thanked them and prepared to leave the room. 

Heyes quietly shut the door, leaving the three of them on the inside. “Not yet. First I’d like to know what you and Paul were saying. If it was none of my business, that’s one thing, but from the way he was looking at me, I think it _is_ my business. I’d like a translation, at least. I suppose you were speaking Gaelic to keep something from me.”

_That’s being blunt, not to say downright rude_ , thought Curry. _He’s getting more outrageous the closer we get to this wedding_.

“Oh, no,” said Paula, “it’s just that Gaelic is … well, it’s the language of the heart, you might say. Paul was puzzled about something, and I must admit I don’t quite understand it myself, what he said.” She quickly provided a translation of what had been said. “See? It wasn’t anything derogatory towards you, or an attempt to keep something from you.”

Heyes felt a little ashamed of his flash of temper. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so sharp. I thought—well, you saw the telegraph that he sent to me. ‘Interesting change of plans,’ he said. What that sounds like to me is that he wants to know the reason for the sudden wedding arrangements …”

“Naturally he does.” Paula opened the door and stood aside for the two men to come out into the passageway so she could lock it.

“And the next question after _that_ ,” continued Heyes, “will be ‘what did you _do_?’ You see?”

Taking his arm to descend the steps to the lobby, with Kid one step behind them, she scolded gently, “Heyes, my brother does _not_ think that you have got me with child and so we had to rush to be married. I assure you—that’s the very last thing he would be thinking.”

Heyes took leave to doubt this, but decided not to say anything further. She was still so very innocent at times. He exchanged a glance with his partner over her head as they reached the ground floor.

Wellington and Trevors were just entering the lobby with the smaller trunk. Seeing an opportunity, Heyes stepped forward with a smile. “Let me help you carry that up.”

“Certainly, as soon as I get the room key,” responded Paul. “It’s very kind of you.”

Correctly deducing that he was not invited to be part of the impending conversation, Curry engaged Dr. MacKenzie in talk. He knew it must be frustrating for his cousin, having nothing to do for the best part of four days, because all of the arrangements for the wedding were being handled by others, and he couldn’t even distract himself with a game of poker, since Junction City boasted no such activity on the weekdays, as far as they had been able to find out. He said as much to MacKenzie.

In Wellington’s room, they set the trunk down and Paul removed his hat, vest, shirt, and gun belt, pouring some water from the jug into the bowl on the wash stand so he could rinse his face. They had been on the train most of the night except for a breakfast stop in Albuquerque. He laid out his shaving gear and began to work up a lather in the mug.

Shutting the door, Heyes poured some more of the water into the kettle that stood ready on the tiny wood stove in the corner. It was almost June, but the desk clerk had seen to it that a fire was going in the stove, not only to take the night-time chill off the room, but to enable water to be heated for shaving. _Now’s as good a time as any to get some more questions answered, and to explain to him about the wedding_.

“I wondered,” he began, “exactly what you meant by that—what you said to Paula.”

“You can’t tell me,” said Wellington, amused, “that you haven’t already made her translate the conversation for you.”

“She did translate it. But that didn’t help a lot. And she said that she didn’t quite understand, herself, what you were talking about.” He poured the boiling water into the basin and stepped back out of the way.

“Thank you.” Paul looked into the mirror to catch his prospective brother-in-law’s expression. What he saw made him turn and gesture to the armchair. “Take a seat. Please.” He began to go around the line of his jaw carefully with the straight razor, wiping the shaving cream off on a piece of paper at the end of each stroke. “You’ve done something to her, Heyes. I’ve never seen her look like that, never.”

This was what the outlaw had been afraid of. He spoke quickly. “But I haven’t! I give you my word. I haven’t done anything to make it so we have to get married—that’s not the reason we’re doing this.”

“I believe you. Though I should like to hear what the reason _was_ —I know you were planning to wait, originally, until you got your amnesty.” Paul wiped the last few smears of lather from his face with a towel, and turned to extract a fresh shirt from his valise—pale blue, with horses’ heads embroidered in black on the pockets. 

As Heyes said nothing, too relieved for the moment to speak, Paul continued, “You can tell me about that later. I am sure there was a good reason. Just now, you want an explanation. Well, I shall attempt to give you one.”

Heyes’s charming smile dawned. The deliberate, courteous return of the conversational initiative was not lost on him. “It’s just—you said, in that letter you wrote to Ellen Ramsay in January of ’eighty-one, that I was the right man, that she shouldn’t worry. What’s made you remember that, all of a sudden?”

“It’s the expression on Paula’s face. She’s changed. I’ve never seen her this way.”

“Changed? How? I’ve known her for quite a while now, and I don’t see anything like that.”

“Perhaps that’s because you’ve been with her the whole time. I haven’t, and it’s quite striking. She’s different even from when you were at the ranch four weeks ago. I’ve never seen her in love—really in love, I realize now—with the right man, I suppose. That’s all I meant.”

Embarrassed, Heyes decided to see if he could turn the tables. Now, while Wellington was already off-balance, apologizing for making Heyes think that something immoral was being suggested, was the time to get him back. “So tell me. Has there ever been a girl for _you_? Somebody _you_ thought might be the right one? I know Paula’s the right one for me, after spending most of my life thinking the right one didn’t exist. What about you?”

For a long moment, there was no sound, and he thought the Englishman was not going to reply. 

Finally Wellington spoke. “There was someone. I thought she could have been the right woman. Perhaps she was. Paula and I had to leave Argyll, in Scotland, which is where Fionnuala lived, when we were nineteen. I didn’t feel right saying anything to her because she was only fourteen years of age at the time—a graceful, red-haired girl, too young to be married, or to leave her family so suddenly. The most important thing was to get my sister out of reach of our aunt, who was attempting to marry her off to someone quite unsuitable. So I left, hoping that God would help the little lady to forget me. It’s been ten years since we’ve spoken. She might well be married herself and have eight or nine children by now, so I’ve not written. I don’t want to remind her of something that is past and gone.” 

Bringing himself up short, he shot an exasperated glance at Heyes. “That is no concern of yours. You had best think of how you’re going to make a good husband to my sister. If you’re ready”—this was said with a slightly sarcastic intonation—“let us go down. You should probably introduce me to Judge Hanley.

“He’ll want to meet Lom and Doctor Mac as well.” Heyes nodded. “Let’s go find ’em and head on over there. His office is across the street, in the court house.”

**11:00 a.m.**

When Lillian entered the hotel, the cool interior was a welcome respite from the heat outside, and she realized just how tired she was. The clerk at the desk offered to help her.

“I’m not sure what I need just yet,” she explained. “You see, my friends are getting married here on Saturday …”

She needed to say no more. “Oh, the Wellington-Smith wedding!” exclaimed the desk clerk. “Yes, they’re all registered here. Are you a friend of the bride or of the groom?”

It took a moment for the clerk’s words to penetrate her sleep-fogged brain. _Smith, right. To everyone but ourselves, it’s the Wellington-Smith wedding, not Wellington-Heyes. Gracious, I hope I don’t slip up and say the wrong thing at some point. That would be catastrophic._ “Both,” she said aloud. “But no one knew I was coming. I could take a room by myself, if you have one free, but it’s very probable that Miss Wellington will want me to share her room.”

“That’s easily arranged, Miss …?” He ended on a questioning note.

“O’More. Lillian O’More.”

“The room that Miss Wellington’s in has a connecting door to the next room. I could put you in that one, and arrange for a key to the connecting door when we’ve spoken with Miss Wellington.”

Lillian was about to answer, when they heard a voice just above them on the stairs. “What about Miss Wellington?” As Paula came further down, she saw the new arrival. “Lillian! How marvellous! Oh, my dear, I’m so glad you’ve come!” She descended with a rush and came forward to embrace her friend.

Tipping the clerk to see her luggage sent up to her room as soon as it arrived, together with some hot water, Lillian accompanied Paula back up the stairs, both talking at once.

“You look so tired! You must have been on the train all night!”

“Where are the boys? Yes, I’m sorry, I must look an absolute fright. I did get some sleep, though.”

“They’ve taken my brother, Dr. MacKenzie, and Sheriff Trevors—yes, they all arrived earlier this morning—over to the court house to meet Judge Hanley and the lawyer, Mr. Brubaker. Heyes said they wouldn’t need me, as the judge wanted to talk about the work yet to be done in pursuing their amnesty.” Paula sank her voice on the last word, shutting the door of her room and gesturing Lillian to a chair. She waved her hand at the cedar chest. “I asked my brother to bring some things from my hope chest—well, that’s what I called it at one time, before I decided to pack everything away, a few years ago—and he just brought the whole thing, so I’ve been unpacking it and trying to see what needs to be done, whether there’s any sewing or mending or alterations needed. And I’ve been ordered to rest as much as possible.”

“Ordered?” Lillian’s eyebrows rose.

“Yes, by Heyes, dear man, once he realized why I suggested delaying the wedding to Saturday.” Paula blushed vividly. “I thought, you know, it would be a bit awkward, this time of the month, if we were to get married on the wrong day.”

“Oh, you poor dear! Yes, it certainly would be. You must tell me everything, but not this minute.”

“No, you need to rest, too, surely?”

“I think I shall be all right, if I just take the opportunity to freshen up and change my dress,” said Lillian, as they heard the sounds of her luggage arriving in the room next door. “Then we can go sit on the hotel verandah and wait for them to come out of the court house.”

“And surprise everyone? I want to see Kid’s face when he sees you.”

This plan was followed. Lillian washed her face and hands, combed out her hair and put it up in a bun again, and changed into her sprigged lavender gown. The two ladies descended the stairs and went outside, taking their seats on a cushioned bench on the verandah, where they sat knitting and talking quietly, enjoying the slight breeze coming into the town from the nearby mountains.

The meeting over, with Judge Hanley and Counsellor Brubaker in possession of a great deal of information which needed to be reduced to notes, or made the basis for legal documents—Brubaker had an idea for a legal course of action to follow, if it should be needed—the seven men descended to the boardwalk separating the court house from the street, intending to go to the café for lunch. Heyes started to cross the street to the hotel. “I’ll get Paula and we’ll meet you there,” he began. “Wait a minute!” He pulled his black hat down to shade his eyes against the sun. “Kid, look! Over there on the hotel verandah!”

Curry stared for a moment, unbelieving. “Lillian!” he shouted, breaking into a run.

Dr. MacKenzie watched as his former patient ran across the street and bounded up the steps, moving with no trace of a limp or of any pain or stiffness. “That’s good to see,” he commented, with satisfaction. “Real good. I had almost no hope that leg would heal as well as it has.”

“That’s due to you, Doctor,” said Heyes. “We’re grateful—more than we can say.”

“Then you’d best thank God, and indeed your partner’s sheer determination,” replied the doctor, “because I—any doctor—could only do so much.”

Heyes nodded. “I know. I have been. Thanking God, that is.” This got him quick looks from both MacKenzie and Trevors. He smiled. “Let’s join the ladies, and see about some lunch.”

As he walked across the street to join his partner, Miss O’More saw him and came to meet him, reaching into her reticule. Curious, Kid followed.

Lillian extracted a folded note and handed it to Heyes. “Oh, by the way, this is for you.”

> _My very best wishes to you and Miss Wellington on the occasion of your marriage. I wish I could be there to see it. Your friend, Harry Briscoe._

“Harry Briscoe!? How on earth did you get this?” Kid came around to look over his shoulder, and Heyes spread the note open for him to see.

She smiled mischievously. “It’s rather a long story. I’ll tell you all about it over tea.”


	6. An Unexpected Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All sorts of things must still be arranged before the wedding takes place, and then an unexpected visitor arrives in Junction City.

**The Bancroft house, Telluride, May 29th, late in the evening**

Richard hung his hat on the tree in the entry-way. “Hannah? Sorry I’m a little late. I had to see Lillian onto the stage for Durango.” He accepted the cup of coffee which his wife pressed into his hand, and flung himself down in the big leather chair in the back parlor.

“Dear, you’re telling the story back to front. Why would Lillian have to go to Durango? Come into the kitchen while you tell me, so I can get your supper dished up. Everything’s still warm.”

“She stopped by my office and showed me a telegraph from Jed.[1] It seems that Heyes and Miss Wellington are being married, this coming Saturday, by a judge in Junction City, New Mexico—in fact, Judge Hanley, the same man I wrote a letter to in the spring, to be hand-delivered.” He smiled at his wife as she finished filling a plate with roast beef, mashed potatoes, and vegetables from her preserves, and led the way to the table in the dining room. “It sounds as if Miss Wellington did more than deliver the letter. I haven’t yet discovered the reason for Hanley performing the wedding at this time, but Lillian says she’ll tell me when she gets back, probably next week. She wanted to be with her friend, and I said, why shouldn’t she go? Susanne Doyle and the rest of the staff can manage the restaurant for a week or two, and Lillian never takes a holiday. She only stopped working when she had to, when she was so sick back in December. So I looked up stage and rail schedules, and it turns out she can get there by late Wednesday morning.”

Hannah Bancroft looked at her husband in affectionate exasperation. “And why didn’t you offer to escort her?”

“I never thought of that! I was just trying to arrange the journey for her. Come to think of it, if I went, I could take the opportunity to meet with Judge Hanley and Counsellor Brubaker.”

“You could also act as a witness at the wedding. They’ll be holding it somewhere privately, if Mr. Heyes is to be married in his own name, won’t they?”

“Yes, probably at the judge’s home.”

“And they’ll need witnesses who know his and Jed’s real names. When does the next stage coach leave?”

“Now that I do know the answer to,” replied the lawyer, responding to his wife’s urgency. “It leaves tomorrow evening at the same time. It’s fortunate that we’re coming into the summer. The Durango route only runs three days a week in the winter and spring.” He pushed his plate to one side. “I’ll pack a valise, and send a wire about the train that leaves Durango on Wednesday morning.”

“Tomorrow will be soon enough for that.” She loaded the plate with second helpings and put it back down in front of him, together with a separate plate holding a slice of peach pie. “Finish your supper.”

**Junction City, Thursday, June 1st**

As Bancroft stepped down to the railway station platform, the sign board swinging just above his head informing him that he had reached Junction City at last, he was surprised to see the bridegroom approaching, accompanied by his partner and prospective brother-in-law.

“Good morning, Joshua, Thaddeus. Good to see you, Paul,” he called. As they drew near enough that he didn’t have to raise his voice, he added, “Congratulations on your baptism, Heyes.” 

“Thank you.” Heyes grasped the lawyer’s hand with enthusiasm. “You can come to our wedding, sign the licence, and all that.” 

“Lillie didn’t say you were coming, but I’m glad to see you,” said Kid, shaking hands.

“She didn’t know I was coming. In fact, I didn’t know it, either, until I told Hannah that I’d just put Lillian on the stage for Durango, and she asked why I hadn’t offered to escort her.” This got a general laugh. “But if you didn’t know I was coming, what are you doing at the depot?”

“I’m taking them to Albuquerque, with the money I withdrew for Heyes from what was sent by Ernesto Armendáriz last summer,” explained Wellington. “They’ll have to hire, or purchase, new suits and hats …”

“Good Homburgs that match the suits,” interrupted Heyes. “If I have to dress up for this thing, I want to do it right. Besides, I saw that big cedar chest you brought for Paula. She’ll be dressing up.”

“I expect she will, though I haven’t seen the dress. There were all sorts of things in there, including a package sent from our French cousin, four years ago now.” Wellington looked at the lawyer. “My sister told me to bring the dress I’d find in the chest, and some other things. I was afraid I’d leave something behind that she wanted, so I just brought the whole thing, especially after our housekeeper told me she had put a box in there as a gift for Paula. I think she and Miss O’More have been talking about clothing ever since Miss O’More arrived yesterday—at least, I haven’t seen much of her. The other thing we need to do in Albuquerque is to find something—perhaps a necklace or a brooch, or a pair of earrings—for Heyes to give her on Saturday. I told him it’s generally expected that the couple will give one another gifts before the wedding.”

“That’s right,” Bancroft concurred.

“She’ll probably wear the flame garnet earrings I gave her last year,” said Heyes. “The jeweller had a matching pair of those stones that I saw when I picked out the stone for her ring, so I just told him to make up a pair of earrings while he was at it. But maybe I can find something else she’d like to have. Besides me, that is.” He grinned, and avoided the punch Curry aimed at his shoulder.

Wellington pointed out the hotel to Bancroft. “I think they’ll have a room for you; if not, you can double up with me. Sheriff Trevors and Doctor MacKenzie are sharing a room.”

“They’re both here? Excellent!”

“Yeah, more folks turned up than we expected.” Kid indicated the elegant stone building down the street from the hotel on the opposite side of the street. “You’ll find Judge Hanley’s rooms in the court house, and Mr. Brubaker has an office next door.”

“Thank you. I’m looking forward to making their acquaintance.”

*** *** ***

In Miss Wellington’s hotel room, joined by a connecting door to Miss O’More’s, the two ladies were preparing to examine the contents of Miss Wellington’s cedar chest. Nothing much had been said on the previous day, as Miss O’More had been resting from her long journey, and Miss Wellington had been laid down upon her bed for most of the day. 

“Paula, before we look through your hope chest, I wanted to show you what I brought to wear and ask if you thought it was all right.” Lillian brought in the bright leaf-green dress and laid it across the bed. “I know you saw this when I wore it at the St. Patrick’s Day dance in Telluride, but …” she hesitated. “You know, this shade of green—some people think it’s unlucky, so I wasn’t sure you’d want me to wear it for your wedding. If not, I have a second good dress, though I’ve just realized I forgot to bring a pair of dress shoes.” She saw that her friend was rather pale. “And are you sure you want to do this at all today? I remember what you said about why you wanted the wedding postponed to Saturday. How are you feeling?”

“Wait!” Paula was chuckling. “Too many questions at once! First, at the moment I feel fine. I took some of the pain-relieving tincture that Doctor MacKenzie had made up for Kid. We’ve found it so useful that we’ve asked an apothecary, at least twice, to make up a fresh supply for us. I shall probably wish to lie down later in the afternoon.” She smiled at her friend. “I suppose it _is_ a hope chest. I stopped calling it that when I decided I did not wish to be married. And then, after I saw Heyes during that hold-up in ’seventy-eight, and realised how impossible everything would be, I just put it away. I haven’t looked in it since.”

“You mean you might not even know all of what’s in it?”

“I’m quite sure I don’t. I suppose there could even be dead mice in it—no, that won’t fit. We have cats at home, and they would have seen to the mice.” Leaving Lillian attempting to stifle her giggles, she went on. “But about this beautiful green dress—I wasn’t aware that there was ill luck associated with the colour—and even if there were, it is I who am being married, not you. Besides, my mother hardly permitted us to speak of such things. She said all of those superstitions about luck and fortune were just that—superstitions—and nothing that a godly Christian woman should concern herself with. That may be why I don’t know about the custom.”

“When Susanne and I were selecting material to make the tablecloths, napkins, and aprons at the Irish Rose,” Lillian explained, “I wanted to use a bright green like this, but I was warned that using a bright green might mean that none of the Irish miners would enter the place. So I picked a darker green, the shade of evergreen needles.”

“So it’s the Irish miners who think it’s bad luck? Now, wait a minute. I wonder if it’s something to do with this bright green—it’s called _uaine_ in Gaelic—being a colour reserved for the use of the _daoine sidh_ , the fairy people. I think I remember some of the children I played with when growing up in Argyll saying something of the kind. The darker green, called _glas_ , is for mortals to use. That would explain why some Irish are reluctant to use things that are _uaine._ ” She smiled. “But it’s nothing to do with us, is it? Even though you are descended from Rory Òg O’More. By all means, wear it. I think it’s a glorious dress. And Jed likes you in it. I saw his face when he saw you at the dance.”

Blushing vividly, Lillian murmured something inaudible and returned the green dress to her own room to hang it up. She would press the wrinkles out of it later, if an iron could be borrowed from the hotel or perhaps from Mrs. Hanley.

When she returned, Paula had flung back the lid of the cedar chest and was taking things out of it. Laying aside a small packet with a French postmark, she lifted out a flat box. “I have no idea what this is. I’m sure I’ve never seen it before.” She opened the box and stared in astonishment at the contents: a pair of blue silk shoes embroidered with gold, with matching embroidered stockings. 

Tucked into one side of the box was a note, which proved to be from Ellen Ramsay, the Wellington twins’ housekeeper and foster mother. Reading it, Paula blushed as deeply as Lillian had a few moments earlier, and handed it to her friend.

“When the right man does come—and I know he will, for I have seen him here, my little lamb—you might find a use for these. I saw them one day when I was in Denver, and decided at once that they would be perfect for you.” Lillian looked up. “Well! What does she mean, she saw him?”

“She had a ‘seeing’,” said Paula, slowly. “A brown-haired, brown-eyed man standing in the kitchen at the ranch, being made welcome as a guest. That was back in 1878. She never told me about the seeing, and I hadn’t described Heyes to her, though I told her his name when I told her about the hold-up. So when she saw him, just after he and I had been promised, and had come up from Texas, she recognized him at once, and called him by his real name. It gave him quite a fright, so I understand. I wasn’t present—I fear I had fled to my bedchamber when she asked me if it wasn’t ‘himself’ after all. I said yes, blushed, and ran.”[2]

“I’ve never met anyone with the ‘sight’.” 

There was a pause as Paula slipped the embroidered shoes onto her feet, where they appeared to fit perfectly. “I don’t care if they go well with my dress or not. I’m going to wear these.”

“Is that the dress?” Lillian asked, examining an ivory gown decorated with blue flowers, packed into the chest between layers of tissue paper. “They’ll go with the blue flowers, I think.” She shook out the bodice and skirt, laying them across the bed. “You'll just have to try it on and we'll see what needs to be done with it. But I’m curious about the French packet.”

“So am I. I’ve never opened it. My French cousin sent it, after I told her about being held up by an outlaw who, however attractive he might be, was surely the most ineligible marriage prospect in creation, even if I had been introduced to him, which I hadn’t. Her response was to send this packet and say it was for my wedding night. Since I didn’t envision any such thing ever taking place, I just put the packet away. I’m surprised Paul was able to find it. But before we open it, there are these.” She lifted out a pair of pumps, in cream satin embroidered with leaves and flowers.

“You said you forgot to bring dress shoes. Would these fit you? They never fit me properly—I bought them for the design, years ago, and then we emigrated to America and I was unable to return them to the shop. Here, try them on.”

“They probably won’t fit. I’m on my feet so much that I have to wear wider shoes than I did as a girl.” Lillian slipped her feet into the satin pumps and stood up. “They do fit!”

“Good. They’re yours. No, take them.”

Lillian noticed that her friend was growing paler. “From what I’ve heard about French ideas of marriage and … that sort of thing, I think we should leave the packet until tomorrow. You look like that pain medication is starting to wear off. What do you say we wait? And I want to ask Doctor MacKenzie to come and take tea with us here, in the room, so he can talk to us both about marriage. My mother told me a fair amount, but I think you said yours died when you were still quite young. There’s so much you should know, and I don’t think you do.”

“I don’t mind waiting. We’ll have Doctor MacKenzie to tea, and then we’ll open the packet—is that what you’re suggesting?”

“Well, yes. That would be better, don’t you think?”

*** *** ***

Leaving Paula to get some sleep, Lillian stepped out into the street to look around the town more than she had as yet had the opportunity to do. She knew that Jed Curry and his partner were not expected back from Albuquerque until late in the evening, possibly in time for supper at the hotel at eight. Thinking she might well look in at the general store, she began to walk along the street toward the court house.

Three men came out of the court house and, seeing her, one of them waved. To her astonishment, she recognized Richard Bancroft. Hastily crossing the street, she went up to him, greeting Judge Hanley and Chester Brubaker at the same time. “Richard! When did you get here? And why? Not that I’m not glad to see you!”

“I got here on the train earlier today, but I’ve been talking legal matters with my colleagues here and haven’t had the opportunity to see you or Miss Wellington. I did see your betrothed and his partner when they went to Albuquerque with Mr. Wellington. They were at the depot when I arrived.” He shook hands with her as he spoke, and drew her into the shade of the awning which fronted the court house.

“You won’t see Miss Wellington today—well, perhaps at supper, perhaps not. She is indisposed and keeping to her room.”

Richard was about to ask for more information, when he caught sight of Judge Hanley, out of the corner of his eye, shaking his head slightly. He forbore, therefore, asking Lillian for enlightenment, assuming the matter was not serious.

“Miss O’More, would you mind stepping into the court room with us for a few moments? There is something I wanted to ask you.” Hanley opened the door and led the way back into the building.

Curious, Lillian turned to face the judge, declining his gesture to a seat.

“Since you are here, Miss O’More, and your betrothed, and a man of good character who knows you well …” he nodded toward Richard Bancroft “… it occurred to me to ask if you and Mr. Curry would like to be married on Saturday as well. Companying with him will place you at a certain amount of risk, which could be avoided by your marriage now. I assume that Miss Wellington has told you why I suggested marriage to her and Mr. Heyes.”

“Yes, she told me. But she’s in a different situation than I am. Wait just a moment. Let me think.” There was a long pause, during which the men respected her silence. Then she turned back to the judge, shaking her head.

“I appreciate the offer, sir, and I know that Jed would as well, but … I don’t even need to ask him what his opinion is. He knows the difficulties we are facing as well as I do. If we were to marry, and I don’t go back to Telluride at all, it will cause talk. There will always be a few people who would think I ran away with him, and they will wonder what the reason is. If we marry, and spend the wedding night together as would be expected, and I go back to Telluride without him, even if I tell people we are married and Richard bears witness to it, what if I were to be with child? People would say we were obliged to marry, and again it would cause talk, unpleasant talk. I don’t want to expose him to that. The only other possibility would be if he were to go back home with me, and we settle down as a married couple in Telluride. That would mean abandoning his partner. And that’s something I would never ask of him. In fact, I won’t permit it. Miss Wellington and I have already agreed we will not let them be split up by anything we could do. They’ve been through too much, all these years, being separated at the Home for Waywards and having to spend years trying to find one another again.” She sighed. “So thank you, Judge. It would be delightful, but it’s just not the right time. We can wait. Jed will be grateful for your offer as well when I tell him what you said.”

**Friday, June 2d**

The entertaining of Doctor MacKenzie to tea in the small parlor opening out from Miss O’More’s hotel room went very well. He explained certain necessary matters to both of his hostesses, going on the assumption that neither of them had had the benefit of such a conversation from their parents. Seeing Miss Wellington’s enthusiasm and very natural desire to please her husband, MacKenzie privately resolved to have a word or two with Heyes after he had left the ladies. He knew, of course, that both of the younger men had had experience with the opposite sex, but it was very probable that neither of them had ever had dealings with a woman who came to the encounter a maid, which meant there were certain considerations that might not occur to them. Curry could be asked to sit in on the conversation if he wished. As the last of the tea was poured out of the pot, he rose, thanked Miss Wellington and Miss O’More, and departed to find the male half of the wedding party.

Very thoughtful after the doctor’s instructive conversation, Miss Wellington sipped the last of her tea for a while in silence. Finally she spoke. “After that, I really want to see what Jeanne Morag sent to me. From something she said in the letter, I think it might be designed to … to get the husband’s attention?”

“Let’s find out.” Lillian helped her pull open the brown paper wrapping, careful not to cut it and risk damaging the contents. A quantity of ivory silk satin, gauze, lace, and ribbon tumbled out. “I don’t even know what it is yet, and I’d say it’s definitely designed to get his attention. This gauze is perfectly transparent. Go put it on!”

Paula retired into her own room, shutting the connecting door behind her. A few minutes later, Lillian heard shocked giggles. The door swung open a fraction. “You’ll have to come in here,” said Paula. “I don’t even want to walk in front of your window, with this on and the curtains pulled back. I’ve drawn them in my room, and lit the lamps.”

Lillian entered Paula’s room. The bride-to-be was examining herself in the full-length mirror, blushing. As Lillian took in the design of the dressing gown, for that was what it appeared to be, and the night-dress which it imperfectly concealed, she blushed as well. She saw a lace and gauze dressing gown, secured at the throat by a large bow of ribbon, but otherwise boasting no buttons or other fastenings. It was worn over a night-dress of satin, gauze, and lace. After Paula had untied the ribbon, slipped her arms free of the loose sleeves, and laid the dressing gown aside, Lillian saw that the satin night-dress was seemingly held together only by a series of ribbons tied in bows, forming a series of lace-edged triangles. 

“That’s just the start of it,” said Paula. “Look at this. I think this is how it’s supposed to work. She demonstrated how each bow was designed to be untied, one at a time, to allow the triangular parts of the night-dress to fall away, revealing the transparent gauze under-dress to view.

“My goodness gracious!” breathed Lillian. “He’s likely to fall out of the window when he sees that!”

“Well, I shouldn’t mind having that effect on him, but—am I right? That is not the only effect it will have.”

“No. I think, from what the doctor just told us, this might make matters move along too quickly. It looks like that’s what it’s designed to do.” Lillian put her hand to her heart. “One hears such things about French women—I know this is intended to be seen only by one’s husband, and therefore no immorality is implied, but still …!”

After more discussion, and experimentation with the ribbons and the different sections of the night-dress, both ladies decided that however much Heyes might be expected to enjoy the sight of his bride in such garments, the wearing of them had best be left until the couple had been married for several days, perhaps longer. 

“I’ll leave you to get dressed again,” Lillian said at last. “I have something for you in my room. Knock on the door when you’re ready.”

This was done. When she came in again, holding the gifts upon which she had been sewing all during the trip to Junction City, the very improper French night wear had been put away out of sight, and Miss Wellington was just buttoning the bodice of a deep blue dinner dress, one of the extra dresses her brother had brought.

Lillian pressed into her hands the tatted reticule that had been made by sewing a pair of tatted doilies together and lining them with satin. “I thought you might not have a reticule of the right color to go with your gown. This won’t hold very much, but it will look right.”

“Yes, indeed. It’s lovely, and I would never have thought of having a different reticule just for the wedding. You’re right. I don’t have anything white or cream or ivory. Thank you!”

“And here’s this.” Lillian spread out the veil, made of silk tulle. She had only had to hem the two edges that were not already finished by a selvedge, and sew in a ribbon headband which could be used to attach the veil to the wearer’s head. 

“Oh, my! It’s full length! Someone’s going to have to explain to Heyes how to pick it up properly after we are declared to be man and wife, so he can kiss me, assuming Judge Hanley includes that part. Lillie, it’s absolutely beautiful. I hadn’t made a veil, or bought one, before I put the chest away, so that’s something that would have been missing, or had to be done up in a hurry. When did you have the time?”

“I sewed both of these things on the train on the way here, after buying the material for the veil in Durango. I already had the tatted doilies and some satin I could use for lining the reticule. It didn’t take that long to do.”

Paula put her arms around her friend and gave her an uncharacteristic hug. “Thank you! It’s so very kind of you! And these were things I needed, too.” Seeing that a silver and turquoise bracelet of Zuni work was being held out to her, she said, “No, wait, Lillie, that’s the bracelet Kid bought for you in Santa Fe, before we got to Laredo, so long ago now.”

“That’s right, and I’m not giving it to you. I’m lending it. Don’t you recall that rhyme, that says at a wedding one is supposed to have ‘something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue’? This can be the borrowed thing.”

“Oh! Well, I … well, of course. You put it back on your own wrist, though, and then you can lend it to me right before the ceremony.”

**Just before noon, Saturday, June 3d** **, 1882**

Pulling a package from his inner coat pocket, Heyes handed it to his betrothed across the table. In defiance of convention, which decreed that the bride and groom should not see one another before the ceremony, all of the wedding participants were eating a late breakfast together at the café in town before driving out separately to Judge Hanley’s home, where the wedding was scheduled to take place at 3:00 o’clock that afternoon. “I guess we’re supposed to give each other something, so … this is for you.”

For the silver-tongued Hannibal Heyes, this opening was decidedly awkward, Miss Wellington thought. The poor fellow must really be nervous after all. Well, of course he was. She wasn’t ashamed to admit that she was excited and nervous and frightened to death all at once—even though she intended to admit that only to herself and her maid of honour. She opened the package to disclose a lavaliere pendant of diamonds and sapphires, set with small seed pearls around the edges. It was stunningly beautiful. 

“Oh! Oh, my! Hannibal, it’s lovely! Give me your hand.”

He stretched out his hand to her. “Why?”

“Because I can’t kiss you as I’d like, right here and now, in the middle of the café, to thank you. So …” Before he knew what she was going to do, she bent her head and kissed his fingers. “That will have to do.”

“Paula! Don’t—you shouldn’t kiss my hand!” He tried to draw it away, but she still had fast hold of it.

“Well, you may kiss mine, and we’ll make up for it later,” she said, smiling at him so mischievously that his heart melted. “Meanwhile—no, don’t pull your hand away—I have something for you as well.” With her free hand, she tried to open her reticule. 

Laughing, Lillian took it from her. “I’ll get it. What am I looking for?”

“A small rectangular box. Yes, that’s it.” She pressed the box into Heyes’s hand and released his fingers.

He opened it quickly. A pair of cuff links nestled in a bed of padded gold silk. They were composed of unusual gem stones that he had never seen before, and he had thought he knew something about gems. Each cuff link had two gem stones joined by a silver chain, and each stone was oval-shaped, with facets cut into its face like a diamond, the color ranging from a deep brown to a pale gold, the gold extending into the brown tones and forming highlights that caught the rays of the sun coming in through the window. _Well, I’m well served for giving her an engagement ring made from a flame garnet,_ he thought. Aloud, he said, “All right, you’ve stumped me. They’re beautiful, but what are they? The gems?” Accepting Paula’s earlier suggestion, he took her hand and raised it to his lips.

“They’re cairngorms.” Wellington spoke up. “The cuff links belonged to our grandfather Campbell, on the Scottish side. Paula asked me to bring them with me so you could have them.”

“Cairngorms?” Kid was curious as well. “Don’t believe I’ve ever heard of those.”

“I think they’re a form of quartz. They’re found in Scotland in the Cairngorm Mountains, in several different colours. These brown ones are a trifle unusual.”

“Paula, if you’ve finished eating, we’d best be going,” Lillian reminded her. “It will take us longer to get ready than it will the gentlemen.”

“Of course. I’m ready. No, you gentlemen stay here and finish your breakfast.” The men rose as the two ladies left the table and went out to the street where a buggy, hitched to Paula’s black mare, was waiting. Paula took the reins, and they drove away, leaving Heyes looking at his cousin and his soon-to-be brother-in-law rather helplessly. 

“What do we do for three hours and more?”

“You have some gettin’ ready to do, too,” Kid said. “Come back over to the hotel and I’ll help you. You’ve got to wash your hair—so do I, as a matter of fact—and then when yours is dry, I’ll help you comb the Macassar oil into it.” He grinned. “Glad my hair stays in place just fine without that stuff, even if it smells good.”[3]

“Yeah, but all that’s not gonna take three hours,” Heyes objected.

“We’ll figure somethin’ out,” Curry said soothingly. “Come on, Heyes. I got an idea or two.”

“O.K., I’m coming.” The two outlaws took their leave of Wellington, nodding to MacKenzie, Trevors, Bancroft, and Brubaker, who had been sitting at the table next to them.

“He’ll do all right,” said the doctor. “I’ve instructed Curry to give him a dose of the tincture I make up for pain relief and sleep. It might help him to get a nap, and it’ll certainly help him to relax.”

* * *

[1] See “A Desperate Journey and What Came of It”, by Ida Arminda Moss <https://archiveofourown.org/works/22039894/chapters/52600702>, in which it is explained how both Richard and Hannah Bancroft found out who Lillian’s friends Smith and Jones really were.

[2] See the story “The Richest Square Mile on Earth,” by Ida Arminda Moss, on Archive of Our Own at this link: <https://archiveofourown.org/works/19425868/chapters/46231369>

[3] Alexander Rowland (1747–1823), a London barber with contacts in Makassar in the Dutch East Indies, made up the first Macassar oil. He imported palm oil scented with the essential oil of ylang-ylang (reputed to be an aphrodisiac, and often used in the East Indies to scent the beds of newly married couples), called it Macassar Oil, and sold it as the best product for affixing a gentleman’s hair in the style of his choosing. By the later 19th century, his son had made a fortune from selling the oil, which was popular world-wide.


	7. The Start of a New Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal Heyes and Paula Wellington are united in Holy Matrimony.

**Judge Hanley’s home, Junction City, Saturday, June 3d**

At the Hanley’s house, Lillian was saying much the same thing. “Paula, you need to lie down and try to take a short nap, at least.”

“I don’t think I could.”

“You can if you take some of this tincture that Doctor MacKenzie gave me. You want to be rested, so that you’ll be refreshed and awake for this evening.”

This got her a sharp look. “Lillian!”

“My dear, it’s just us two women here, so I’ll go ahead and say it. It’s true and you know it, even though you don’t plan to wear that negligée and gauze dressing gown that your French cousin sent to you.”

“No. Not tonight, anyway. Things would be likely to get a bit _too_ exciting, if I understand correctly how those things are supposed to work. Lillian, now you have me doing it. I can’t believe I’m talking like this. I’ve always attempted to be ladylike.”

“You’re not being unladylike. You’re about to be married. All sorts of things will come up, and you’ll have to discuss some of them with him. That will mean being even _more_ unladylike, according to the standards we were both raised with. Besides,” Lillian paused to set the iron on top of the wood stove, preparatory to touching up both of their dresses, “if you plan to tell him what you discussed with me and Doctor MacKenzie, about not waiting until it gets dark, so that he can see you, as part of your gift of yourself to him, I expect you’re both going to be a little embarrassed. He’ll probably deal with it better than you will.”

“I must do _something_ of the kind,” said Paula. “After what my grandmother Edwards told my mother, years ago, that she had nine children and Mr. Edwards never saw her ankles … I just think that’s wrong, when you look at the Scripture that I’ve asked my brother to read at the wedding, where it talks about the bodies of the married couple belonging not to themselves, but to the spouse.[1] I have to make that clear to Heyes somehow.”

Lillian chuckled. “I expect he’ll enjoy it, after he gets over the shock. Now, come on, drink this up, lie down on the bed, and see if you can sleep, or at least close your eyes and rest. I’ll see to getting the dresses ready, and I’ll wake you in plenty of time to put your hair up.”

*** *** ***

The Hanleys, Dr. MacKenzie, Lom Trevors, Richard Bancroft, Chester Brubaker, and Paul Wellington were gathered in the large back parlor at the Hanley home ready to receive the male half of the wedding party. It had been decided to hold the ceremony there rather than in the more formal front parlor, as there were a total of eleven people present and the front parlor was not large enough.

“Do you suppose I should go and see if Heyes and Kid need any help?” Paul Wellington was very nearly as nervous as his sister, almost as if he and not Heyes were the bridegroom. He was extraordinarily glad, in a way, that the ordination to the office of an Episcopal deacon which Bishop Spalding had arranged for him had been put off until mid-September. He would have been happy to perform the wedding himself for his sister and her intended, but as he had not yet even confided to Heyes his intention to seek ordination, it was better that Judge Hanley, whom Heyes knew and respected, should officiate.

Richard Bancroft leaned forward to lay a detaining hand on the young man’s arm. “I wouldn’t. They’ll come when they’re ready. We’re in no hurry.” As one of the three married men present, though Dr. MacKenzie was a widower, his words carried weight. The younger men in the party did their best to relax.

Wellington tugged at his tie, opened the big Bible that Judge Hanley had provided, and began to run over the passages from Ephesians and I Corinthians that his sister had asked to have him read aloud as a part of the ceremony. The New Testament portion had the 1881 Revised Version, printed in parallel columns with the Authorized Version. The Revised Version was newly out from the Oxford University Press, supposed to be easier for modern readers to comprehend, with more free-flowing English, than the 1611 Authorised Version. Very familiar with the passage in the older Bible, Paul found himself hesitating over the altered words. 

A few minutes later, the door to the room that the judge used as a study opened to admit Hannibal Heyes and Jed Curry. In the good silk-blend suits obtained in Albuquerque the previous day, brown for Heyes and a deep gray-blue for Curry, they looked ready to face anything. Heyes wore a linen shirt of deep cream, with French cuffs secured by the cairngorm links Paula had given him earlier in the day, and a silk tie with a brown and gold print, admirably complementing the cuff links. 

“You’ll please the ladies, both of you,” said MacKenzie. 

“Oh, it doesn’t matter about me,” said Heyes. “They have a lot more work to do to get ready than we did. I’m looking forward to seeing her—Paula and Lillie both, that is.”

Mrs. Hanley rose. “I’ll go see how far along they are.” Leaving the stair door open, she went up the stairs to the bedroom they had allotted to the bride.

Heyes fidgeted, thought about sitting down, realized he would crease his trousers, and thought better of it. Then he heard footsteps on the stairs. He and Kid both swung around. First down was Lillian O’More, radiant, her vibrant dark brown hair and green eyes perfectly set off by the leaf-green gown she wore. She crossed the room, the gentlemen rising as she did so, and took Kid’s arm, stepping back a bit to leave the centre of the parlor free for the bridal couple and the judge.

Preparing to step forward and offer Paula his arm, Heyes stopped suddenly, drawing in his breath sharply, bereft of words. His betrothed came down the stairs, the pendant he had given her nestled in the lace of her bodice, the flame garnet earrings which he had bought for her at the same time as the matching engagement ring gleaming in her ears. The pearl-coloured gown, with its slight train, featured a closely tailored bodice with long sleeves, made high to the throat, while the full skirt fell from the closely-sewn pleats just showing under the lower edge of the bodice. A blue silk flower nestled in green silk leaves at the throat, complemented by another flower and its leaves along the hem of the lace over-dress, bringing out the blue of her eyes and matching the blue ribbon holding her veil, the latter a gift from Lillian, in place. In one hand she carried a tatted white lace reticule, another gift from Lillian. The toes of a pair of blue silk slippers, heavily embroidered with gold, peeped out from beneath her hem. The wild rose color in her cheeks, deepening as she saw Heyes, owed nothing to any rouge or other artifice.

Judge Hanley privately thought that he had seldom seen a couple who belonged together so completely. He smiled fondly at his wife, who was coming down the stairs behind the bride. “If we are ready to start, I’d like to have you, Miss Wellington, and you, Mr. Heyes, come here and stand right in front of me. Mr. Heyes, you stand here on my left. That’s right. Now you, Miss O’More, and you, Mr. Curry.” He marshalled the participants into place, opened his service book, and began to read. The service was taken from the wedding ceremony in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer[2], with optional modifications to be used when no religious content was desired.

“Dearly beloved,”[3] the judge began, “we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony ; which is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men: and therefore is not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God. Into this holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined. If any man can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.” He looked up from the book and gravely met the gaze of the bride and groom to make sure they were paying attention.

“I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in Matrimony, ye do now confess it. For be ye well assured, that if any persons are joined together otherwise than as God’s Word doth allow, their marriage is not lawful.” He paused. “We have already discussed the problems inherent in your ambiguous relations with the law, Mr. Heyes, and that is the only impediment of which I am aware. Mr. Wellington, will you now read the passages that have been chosen?”

Using his own small New Testament which he had retrieved from his saddlebag, Wellington began: “The first reading is from Ephesians chapter five, beginning at the twentieth verse.

> Give thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord … Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it … [L]et every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

He continued with the passage from I Corinthians which Paula had specifically requested him to read, and then finished with the brief Gospel passage, introducing it with the familiar phrases from the Book of Common Prayer: 

> The Holy Gospel is written in the ninth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, beginning at the fourth verse: Jesus answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

Picking up his book again and opening it at the ribbon, Judge Hanley continued, “Hannibal Heyes, wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”

Heyes spoke his response strongly. “I will.”

“Paula Anne, wilt thou have this Man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”

“I will,” she answered.

“Who giveth this Woman to be married to this Man?”

Paul Wellington, removing his sister’s hand from his arm and proffering it to Heyes, replied, “In honour of our mother and father, I do.”

Following the judge’s prompts, Heyes continued. “I, Hannibal, take thee, Paula Anne, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.”

“I, Paula Anne,” she responded steadily, “take thee, Hannibal, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and obey, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth.”

Standing as closely beside his cousin as he could manage, in case Heyes became unsteady on his feet or something equally disconcerting, Kid produced the wedding ring when called upon. Lillian did the same for Paula, Heyes having decided that he wanted to wear a ring as well as his bride. It was not all that common for a man to wear one, but some did, and in his case, it would certainly put off any lawman or bounty hunter who was looking for the outlaw Hannibal Heyes. A wanted outlaw would not normally take the risk of getting married while he was still on the run. Besides, he wanted Paula to know that he belonged to her just as much as she would now belong to him.

Pulling the third finger of her left glove free of the body of the glove, Paula placed her hand in Heyes’s. The couple placed the rings on each other’s hands, Heyes speaking the words after the judge, “With this Ring I thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.” Paula replied in similar words, omitting any reference to worldly goods, since that matter was governed by the 1874 Colorado statute allowing a wife to own property separately if the couple chose, though its control would pass to her husband upon their marriage.

*** *** ***

Kid Curry came back to the present, his attention having drifted during the prayers which Judge Hanley, as a deacon in the Methodist church, conscientiously included, to realize that the ceremony was almost finished. 

“Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder. Forasmuch as Hannibal and Paula have consented together in holy wedlock, and have witnessed the same before God and this company, and thereto have given and pledged their troth, each to the other, and have declared the same by giving and receiving of Rings, and by joining hands; by the authority vested in me, I pronounce that they are Man and Wife, In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

The bride and groom stood still, clasping hands. Hanley added, “Mr. Heyes, you may kiss your bride.”

Having been properly coached about this part, Heyes grasped a double handful of the folds of Paula’s veil and raised it, flinging the floor-length material back over her head before he put his arms around her and kissed her, as decorously as he could manage. Dr. MacKenzie, Sheriff Trevors, the two lawyers, and the bride’s brother all broke into restrained applause.

“Come on, Heyes,” Kid reminded him. “We’ve got all those church ladies waiting out in the garden with all that food they brought. You can do some more of that later on.”

“Food sounds good,” said Heyes. “But … _how_ many people did you say you were expecting?” He turned to Mrs. Hanley.

“Most of the ladies who attend the church regularly, and many of their husbands and children. Probably about thirty people. You won’t be expected to talk to everyone, or even to stay very long. They all know how difficult this is for you both.” She smiled, holding out her hand. “Congratulations, Mrs. Heyes.” The others all came forward, offering congratulations to the newly wedded pair. 

Greatly daring, Kid stepped forward and kissed the bride on the lips. It was more or less expected for the best man to do so, and he knew Heyes wouldn’t mind. He wasn’t so sure about Paula. He did, in fact, receive a sharp look from her, but she said nothing, only clinging to her husband’s arm more tightly.

Heyes had not failed to notice this. “That’s enough, Kid. And that reminds me. No shivareeing. Not from you or anybody else. You got that? Paula wouldn’t like it, and I don’t think I would either.”

“Yeah, you said that before. Leave it to me. I’ll make sure nothin’ like that happens,” said Kid reassuringly. “Good thing we ain’t anywhere near the boys in the Hole. You’d really be in for it.”

Heyes blanched. “Never thought of that. You remember what I said, now.”

“Heyes, I promise. Nothing will happen.”

Hanley interrupted. “Mr. and Mrs. Heyes, I need you to sign the licence. You’ll sign this one using your real names, and then, on this copy here, which you may need to carry with you for a while, you’ll use Mr. and Mrs. Joshua Smith. I’ll take the responsibility for its not being a true copy. If you want me to keep the original, or send it with Mr. Bancroft …”

Paul Wellington stepped forward to sign both documents. “I’m taking it home with me, unless Richard thinks otherwise.”

“No, you should keep it,” the Colorado lawyer assured him. “That’s an excellent idea. Judge, I really appreciate your going out of your way to provide them with a copy in the other name.” He bent to sign his name to both documents as one of the witnesses.

“Mr. Curry, you’re the only other one who has to sign each document differently. Unless you think you can risk signing ‘Jedidiah Curry’ to both of them, since most lawmen don’t know your first name.”

“No, better not. I’ll put ‘Thaddeus Jones’ on the one with the alias. Then everything’ll match. Judge, we sure thank you.” Curry carefully signed both of his names.

The other witnesses stepped up to sign their names in the proper places, then Wellington blotted the licence made out in the name of Hannibal Heyes, folded it, and put it in his inside coat pocket. “Now, let’s see about that pot-luck.” He led the way to the door into the garden, opened it, and stepped back to let the bridal couple go first, handing Heyes his brown Homburg as the couple passed him.

After everyone had congratulated Mr. and Mrs. Smith and had helped themselves to fried chicken, mashed potatoes, baked ham, roast beef, potato salad, cole slaw, scalloped potatoes, jellied fruit salad, yeast dinner rolls, several varieties of fresh vegetables and fruit, and, of course, the wedding cake that Lillian had baked, the newly married couple were finally able to sit down and eat, at a small table set up at one side of the garden so they could have some privacy, with only their maid of honor and best man present. 

Watching carefully, Lillian saw that her friend kept putting down her knife and fork, stopping to greet and chat with everyone who approached their table. Paula was on her best behavior and was making what to Lillian were obvious efforts to be friendly and sociable with all the inquisitive strangers. The strain was starting to tell on the normally very reserved young woman, and Lillian finally intervened.

“Paula, you don’t have to speak to everyone here. You don’t have to leave your food—and your husband—and go around to thank them all. You and Heyes just concentrate on each other and your dinner. Jed and I will make sure no one else comes up to talk to you. They can do all of that tomorrow after church, assuming you two are coming to church.”

“I think we plan to,” said Heyes. “Depends on when it is.”

“I found that out already,” said Kid. “Quarter to eleven. Lillie and I will drive out here, then, and pick the two of you up in the judge’s four-seat buggy.” At Lillian’s nod, he laid aside his napkin and stood up, prepared to help her forestall any more people who tried to come and talk to the newlyweds. He noted with approval that Mrs. Hanley was doing the same on the other side of the table.

After a few more minutes, seeing that Kid was busy talking to a younger couple who had come up to offer congratulations, and that Mrs. Hanley was chatting with a gray-haired lady who had made a bee-line for the new bride, probably to give her a great deal of unnecessary advice, Lillian slipped quietly back to the table. “I think you can both get into the house now without anyone saying anything. Go on. We’ll hold them. When everyone’s gone, we’ll bring the rest of the food inside to put it in the ice box, so you’ll have something to eat later on without having to do any cooking. And Jed will make sure the people are all gone before we leave. We’ll come and tell you, see if there’s anything else you need, and then you can lock the doors and be alone.”

Paula looked up. “Lillie, you don’t know how much I—that is, we—appreciate this. Heyes likes talking to strangers, but he’s been too busy enjoying all this good food.”

“And you need to do the same. Go on—get yourselves second helpings, and then go into the house.”

Heyes stood up. “Thanks, Lillie. And you and Kid’ll say everything that’s proper to the judge and Mrs. Hanley, won’t you? About how much we appreciate the loan of the house for tonight and tomorrow night? We’ll even wash the dishes and make the bed before we come into town on Monday.” He favored her with a wide-eyed, innocent smile.

Lillian choked. “Get along with you, now. We’ll see you in the morning, at about half past ten.”

Paula picked up her long kid gloves, which she had laid to one side so she could eat. Helping themselves once more from the table laden with dishes, Mr. and Mrs. Heyes made their way quietly to the back door of the house. Then they were inside, with the door shut against visitors. 

“You know, Paula, I’m sorry. I didn’t even think about how much you hate parties like that one. I could have done some of the talking. I like to talk.” Heyes gave her a rueful smile. “But I was eating—I like to do that, too—and I didn’t see how overwhelmed you were.”

She took his plate, set both plates down on the table in the kitchen, turned, and walked straight into his arms, raising her face for his kiss. 

* * *

[1] “The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time … and come together again” I Corinthians 7:4-5, Authorised Version.

[2] The Episcopal wedding service has been the standard used by judges and other non-clerical wedding officiants for many years in the United States and Territories, and still is to the present day. If the judge is himself a Christian cleric of some kind, and if the couple desires, the religious references which are in the original service, but marked as optional in the judge’s service book, may be left in, so that the ceremony bears a closer resemblance to a church wedding. (Source: a Colorado county court judge who is also an ordained deacon, personal interview, 2016.)

[3] Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments; and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, According to the Use of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America. ©1789, 1871 Standard Edition, New York Bible and Common Prayer Book Society, Cooper Union, Fourth Avenue, New York, M.DCCC.LXXVI, pp. 254-256.


	8. Minor Complications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few road bumps are to be expected in the beginning of a marriage.

**Judge Hanley’s home, Junction City, Sunday, June 4th**

Looking at her friend Lillian O’More across the teacups on the stone seat in the Hanleys’ garden, Paula Heyes felt an indefinable restlessness. She had been married … _let’s see, it’s just about twenty-three hours now, isn’t it? I’ve been away from Heyes for over an hour, spending some conversational time with Lillie while he and Kid have their own talk, and I’m missing him dreadfully._

She smiled apologetically at Lillian. “I’m sorry … would you mind terribly if we continued this conversation tomorrow evening, when Heyes and I come into town and register at the hotel? I think I need to …” She stopped, blushing.

“Get back to your husband?” supplied Lillian, laughing. “Of course I don’t mind! I understand perfectly.” She rose briskly, gathering the teacups and the plate on which Paula had served her some of the left-over wedding cake while she contented herself with a cold piece of roast chicken from the Hanleys’ icebox.

Heyes was out in the stable, helping his partner harness the judge’s horse to the buggy, also borrowed from the Hanleys, in which Kid had driven all four of them back out from town after the Sunday church service. Tightening a strap and buckling it, Heyes said cheerfully, “Anyway, you know how it is, Kid. I needed to talk things over with you—I did, really—but I’ve got to see to Paula, see if she needs anything.” He faltered for a moment, hoping that his new wife could be pried away from her tea party with Miss O’More, and decided to cross that bridge later. Tethering the horse to the hitching rail in front of the house, the two men entered the front parlor to find their ladies waiting for them. Lillian was just tying the strings of her bonnet, obviously making ready to depart.

A flurry of quick farewells, and Kid Curry was out the door, handing Lillian up into the buggy. He shook the reins to signal the horse, and they moved away at a trot.

Watching their guests leave, Paula checked her watch. It had been roughly eighteen hours since she and her husband had been intimate, which agreed with the waiting time recommended to them by Dr. MacKenzie when the wedding night involved a woman who was still a maid. Suddenly feeling that Heyes was watching her, she turned to face him. His brown eyes rested on her with affection and … something else. As inexperienced as she was, she still thought she knew what he was thinking. She stepped forward, her hands going out to him. He should learn that he was not the only one so affected.

“You know, darling, from everything I’ve heard—and it’s no use your telling me that I oughtn’t to have heard anything, because you know I have that cousin in Paris who writes to me about such things—I think we were very blessed that one of us was … er, experienced. You knew what to do, and everything worked out perfectly! I’m glad Lillie and Kid are gone. Of course, it was lovely having them here as our guests, even though we are not in our own home yet, but, well, I was looking forward to having you to myself.”

Heyes met her gaze, and was suddenly overwhelmed with a terrible, confused tangle of feelings: desire, worry, something that almost felt like guilt. Possibly it had to do with her oblique reference to all of the other women he had known. He broke eye contact with her and turned his head to look out the window.

“What is it, darling?” Paula asked uncertainly. She had rather expected him to respond with alacrity to her suggestion. He had certainly not been backward in his attentions the previous evening. “What’s wrong?”

He turned back to face her, his expression, out of long habit, shifting to a reassuring smile, which, with a little effort, could even be made to extend to his eyes. “Nothing’s wrong. Why?” Having never seen Paula lose her temper in the nineteen months of their acquaintance, he was entirely unprepared for what followed. 

“Don’t you dare to do that to me!” Worried, frightened that something was obviously amiss which he was trying to hide from her, Paula did not try to moderate her tone.

“Do—do what?” stammered Heyes, aghast, the false smile disappearing as if it had never been.

“Lie to me with your face! We agreed we wouldn’t try to deceive one another, did we not?” She took a deep breath, her hands shaking, tears springing to her eyes as she realized she had just shouted at this wonderful man whom she loved so desperately and whom she had vowed, only the previous day, to honor and to obey. 

“Oh.” He looked down at his boots. “Sorry. Habit.”

“So what _is_ the matter?” When he did not answer immediately, she took his hands and gently pulled him to a wing chair on one side of the fireplace, while she took a seat opposite. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s one thing, but …”

“I don’t know how to explain. Don’t you want to sit with me?” he added, gesturing to the love seat divan on one side of the room and venturing on a welcoming smile, quite genuine this time.

“No, I need to see your eyes … but, oh, Heyes, I’m so sorry I snapped at you!”

“It doesn’t matter,” he responded, automatically trying to soothe her. “You’re right. We did agree not to lie to each other, and you know me well enough now to spot the deception. Snapping at me is nothing. Kid slugged me the only time I tried that with him.”

Paula's eyes widened. “He did? Oh, well, in that case … seriously, though, dearest, please tell me what you were thinking. If you can't explain, perhaps you can describe what came into your mind just now? Perhaps you saw a picture of some kind in your thoughts?”

Heyes thought about that. She had, uncannily, hit the nail right on the head. “Well, I guess it started with a conversation I had with your brother, back in January of ’eighty-one, just before he left for Laredo and the three of us left for Estes Park by way of El Paso. He told us—Kid and me—that he'd be lying if he said it didn't worry him just a little, seeing me about to escort you on a thousand-mile trip, with no chaperon in sight except for my partner. He hinted that I might want to, well, rush things a bit, you might say, and all I’d need to do, if you objected, would be to get Kid to help me out.”

“I can see I'll need to have a talk with my brother,” Paula said, after she had thought about the implications of that remark. “He thought Kid would help you force your attentions on me? Was he _mad_? Paul, I mean.”

“Yeah, that's about the same reaction Kid had to that suggestion. He belted Wellington in the face. Of course, that got us an apology. Then I took your brother aside and told him that I would never do what he was worryin’ about—that I’d never forced a woman in my life and wasn’t about to start with the woman I love—but I did understand his concern. If it was my sister in such a situation, I'd probably be worried too, however well I thought I knew the man she was plannin’ to marry.”

He looked up at her, leaning his elbows on his knees and spreading his hands as he talked. “I told Paul that I had kind of a … a vision, a picture of you, like a bowl made out of fancy glass. There’s one in Soapy’s house in Denver—expensive Irish crystal, he told us. I forgot the name.”

“Waterford.” Paula nodded.

“That’s it. It was perfect, clean, not a mark on it, sparkling in the lamplight. I wouldn't want to touch it, especially if I hadn't washed my hands. I told your brother that’s how I thought about you. I wouldn't touch you, not until the right time, because I’d get that beautiful crystal all marked up with my grimy fingers.” 

He stopped, then stood up and paced restlessly across the room before sitting down again to face her. “Yesterday, somebody put that crystal bowl right into my hands …”

“My brother. But he meant it, Heyes. He gave me away to you at the wedding in good faith. I’m yours now, by the exchange of vows before God and man—you can touch that crystal bowl any time you like. You can use it for the purpose for which it was intended.” She paused, blushing. “You did quite well with that last night. I … I liked what you did.”

Heyes's blush answered hers. He had never previously had this kind of conversation with a woman; of course, he had never previously been married, nor been with a woman who had come to him completely pure and untouched. “You don’t understand,” he protested, shaking his head. “My hands are still grimy. Nothing’s ever going to get them clean. I wasn’t thinking about it last night, because I had too many other matters on my mind, and I’d planned so carefully for the first night … but now, when you mentioned I was experienced … the other women … Don’t you see?”

“Oh, darling ...” She started to speak, but he interrupted. Once he had started on the impossible explanation, he couldn't stop. He put up his hand to engage her silence.

“I know how pleased you were—well, so was Kid—when I got baptized, a month ago. But I don’t think it worked. I saw Kid change, after he did that, but I’m not … I don’t feel any different. I’m not fit to be your husband. No one can fix that.”

Gently, Paula reached forward and took his hands in hers, turning them palm up. “You're wrong, Heyes. Somebody already _has_ fixed it. Your hands _are_ clean. No, listen to me now.” She released his hands, rose, and went upstairs to the bedroom to retrieve her Bible. Coming back and seating herself, she flipped it open to the book of Acts, praying that the Lord would show her the verses she needed. She knew them by heart, but they seemed all mixed up in her mind under the strain of the moment. 

“First, there's this verse. He’s talking to Saul here, that is, the Apostle Paul. ‘And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.’[1] Then the Apostle Paul wrote this: ‘How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?’[2] That means you died with Christ when you were baptized and were raised to life again as a completely different man. That man who had been with women all over southern Wyoming—forgive me for being indelicate, but that’s what it sounds like you're trying to tell me you did—is dead. Listen to this: ‘Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’[3] You realize what that means, Hannibal? It means you're chaste, pure now, just like I was when I came to you yesterday.”

He stared at her, stunned, tried to speak, and failed.

“You know I told you, back over a year ago, that I didn’t want to know about it if you felt it necessary to go to a ... a house of ill repute? I said I wouldn’t ask you, and I’m not going to, but I _know_ you haven't done anything like that in the past month. You’re as clean as you were on the morning of May ninth, when Kid pulled you up out of the Big Thompson, with all impurities washed away.” Tears were stealing down her cheeks, but she kept her eyes on her husband’s face, making no attempt to wipe them away.

Slowly, Heyes stood up, bent to take her hands, and pulled her to her feet, taking her gently into his arms. Putting her hand up to touch his face, she realized suddenly that there were tears on his face as well. 

“Paula, that’s … that’s impossible! No,” he added hastily, as she looked up in alarm, “I believe you. It’s God’s Word, isn’t it? I’m just having a little trouble getting a hold of it.” He kissed her, then let go as something else occurred to him. “I know you’re not asking, but I’m gonna tell you anyway. There’s been no one else—no other woman—since the day I met you, back in November of ’eighty. I thought about it when we got back to Denver after I’d given you that promise ring, but I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want anybody else. Kid felt the same. If you two were waitin’ for us, we figured the least we could do was wait for you.” He smiled down at her—a warm, honest smile, with desire now stirring at the back of his eyes.

She could not mistake what she was seeing. The Lord had truly healed him of his pain all in a moment, leaving him able to think, once again, about the joys of being newly married. She smiled back. “It’s been over eighteen hours.”

“But the doc said...,” he objected, not very seriously. 

“Well, Doctor MacKenzie isn’t here, is he?”

“I hope not!” exclaimed Heyes. “You think you’re able to go ahead?”

“We can find out, can’t we?” 

**At the hotel in Junction City, Monday afternoon, June 5th, 1882**

Heyes signed the hotel register with an exaggerated flourish: **Mr. & Mrs. Joshua Smith**. He had deliberately signed out of the room he shared with Kid on Saturday morning, just so he could do this—sign the register for both Paula and himself, as man and wife. He bent to pick up her bag and his own, only to find himself forestalled by the elderly desk clerk, beaming at the newlywed couple as he seized the bags and led the way up the stairs. 

The entire town had taken an interest in the Wellington–Smith wedding. Naturally, people did get married in Junction City from time to time, but this was the first time anybody could remember that the betrothed couple and their entire wedding party had travelled there from other states and territories to actually be married in the town. Everybody was curious. Everybody wanted to congratulate them. And, thought Heyes with satisfaction, the last thought to cross anybody’s mind would be that the bridegroom was Hannibal Heyes and his best man was Kid Curry, both wanted by the law. It was proving to be a very good disguise, which, this time, had the merit of being true.

From across the hotel lobby, Lom Trevors watched as the couple ascended the stairs. He knew that Heyes, at least, would come back down shortly to discuss taking the entire party to supper at the café. He turned to Kid Curry, also watching. “I don't think I've ever seen that man before in my life.”

“Yeah.” Curry nodded. “He's changed since last spring. Reckon we both have.”

“He's changed since Saturday morning! Didn't know marriage could do that for a man.”

“Marriage to the right woman?” said Kid, looking up the stairs to see if he could catch sight of Lillian. She was to join him in the lobby to discuss supper plans. “I’d say that could do quite a lot, Lom.” 

Heyes joined them a few minutes later. “The girls’ll be down in a little while. Lillian saw us moving into our room and she and Paula got to talking.” He grinned. “Don’t worry, they’ll be down. They both know we’re all waitin’ to get something to eat. Where’s Mac? And Wellington? And Richard? And the Hanleys, for that matter? I still have to thank them for the loan of the house. That was really good of them—worked out great for us.”

He sat down beside Kid on the sofa. “What were you two talking about? Or was it private?”

“No, nothing like that,” replied Kid. He left it up to Lom to say something if he wanted to.

After a moment of silence, Trevors said, “I was just telling the Kid how much I thought you’d changed, even since Saturday. Marriage agrees with you, Heyes. But it’s true what he said, too, that you’ve both changed a lot since I saw you in Idaho Springs a year ago.” He’d been here in town for five days now, but everyone had been busy preparing for the wedding, and of course Heyes had been unavailable for the past two days, at Judge Hanley’s house a mile outside of town with his bride. 

Lom finally decided to say what had been bothering him since he’d met Heyes and Curry again on the previous Wednesday evening. “Matter of fact,” he continued casually, looking from one to the other, “I’d been meanin’ to ask you about that. Both of you are so different I’d hardly have known you in the street. It’s not just Heyes, getting married and all. It’s somethin’ else. If you don’t want to say, that’s all right by me. But it’s almost like you two got religion or something.”

The partners exchanged glances. “Yep,” Curry answered, “That’s about the size of it.”

Trevors stared, then shot a quick, incredulous look at Heyes, who nodded. “Yeah, Lom. Both of us. Last July for him, a month ago for me.[4] You really think there’s a difference?” he asked, thinking of his conversation with Paula on Sunday afternoon. “I know there is with Kid, but ...”

“Yeah, there’s a difference. Can’t put a finger on just what it is, but it’s real obvious—to me, anyway, since I know you both,” Lom assured him. “At least, I thought I did. It’s nothing bad,” he added, seeing the serious expressions on the faces of both of the outlaws.

“That’s good to hear,” Kid said, exchanging another glance with his cousin. “Seriously, Lom, we’ll tell you all about it if you want to hear, but maybe later. You said you wanted us to go north with you later this week.” Trevors nodded. “On the train, then, or maybe some evening.”

“Sure thing.” Just then they saw the rest of their party approaching from two different directions: the ladies descending the stairs, and Paul Wellington coming in from the street with Richard Bancroft, accompanied by Dr. MacKenzie.

“Judge Hanley said to tell you that he and his wife would be going home for their supper this evening,” Bancroft greeted them, shaking hands with Heyes. “So it’s just us to eat at the café tonight. I’ve already told them they’ll have eight to supper very shortly. Of course, we don’t have to sit together at the same table.” He smiled at Paula. “If you’d prefer to be alone with your husband, Mrs. Heyes.”

As Richard had expected, this form of address caused her to blush vividly and reward him with a brilliant smile. “Thank you, Richard. I think you’re the first one to say that since the wedding. Of course, lots of people said ‘Mrs. Smith’ at the pot-luck in the Hanleys’ garden Saturday afternoon, but that’s different.”

“I imagine it is. Now I’ve reminded you that you are really and truly married to a retired bank and train robber.” Catching sight of Heyes’s face out of the corner of his eye, he grinned to show he was joking.

Paula smiled back mischievously. “That’s why I emigrated from Britain. Didn’t you know?”

“To catch yourself an outlaw for a husband?” asked her brother wryly. “I wish I’d known that earlier.”

Heyes knew they were teasing, but a conversation of this sort made him uncomfortable, coming so close on the heels of the discussion he and his wife had had the previous day. He still thought that a lady like her being married to an owl-hoot was unsuitable, somehow. He decided to change the subject. “What do you say we go and find something to eat? I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.” _Paula will be hungry, too, considering how we spent the day_ , he thought, but naturally kept this to himself, as Lillian O’More was present.

Amidst general laughter, the whole party filed out onto the verandah and crossed the street to the café.

Conversation over supper became general. As they reached the comfortable stage of drinking coffee or tea and filling up the corners, Richard said seriously, “Gentlemen, Judge Hanley asked me to remind you that he would like to see all of us in his chambers tomorrow morning at half-past nine. He wants to discuss some of the legal matters you originally came to town to deal with.” He looked at the outlaws. “Brubaker will be there as well. We won’t need to bother you ladies, and we shouldn’t need you two either”—he included both Heyes and Kid in a quick glance—after a few initial matters are dealt with. This is where you allow your attorneys to do their jobs.”

“Can’t get used to how peculiar that sounds,” commented Heyes. “Our attorneys.”

* * *

[1] Acts 22:16, Authorized Version.

[2] Romans 6:2-3, Authorized Version.

[3] II Corinthians 5:17, Authorized Version.

[4] See chapter two of “Hannibal Heyes Confronts the Hound of Heaven,” by Ida Arminda Moss, on Archive of Our Own: <https://archiveofourown.org/works/25481086/chapters/61810633>


	9. The Curry and Heyes Amnesty Project

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Judge Hanley and the two attorneys lay plans to help Heyes and Curry achieve the amnesty that was promised to them over two years previously.

**Tuesday, June 6th, 1882**

After breakfast the next day, all of the men walked across to the courthouse, leaving Paula and Lillian to catch up on their tatting and conversation. The two outlaws were wearing the good town clothes they had worn for the wedding, which they considered appropriate for calling upon a judge on a matter of business. They lagged behind as Wellington, Bancroft, MacKenzie, and Trevors approached the courthouse ahead of them.

As they stepped down from the boardwalk in front of the hotel, a young man who looked vaguely familiar brushed past them with a muttered word of apology. Heyes and Curry crossed the street to the courthouse, mounted the stairs, entered the empty courtroom, crossed to Judge Hanley’s chambers, went in, and shut the door behind them. Heyes took the seat the others had left for him, but Kid went over to the window that looked out to the street. He saw the young man they had passed stop and stare after them. After a long pause, he changed direction and began to walk toward the courthouse.

“You’re about to have company, Judge,” Kid commented. “Young fellow we passed in the street, looked kind of familiar.”

Brubaker joined him at the window. “That’s Deputy Johnny Miller. I’d have thought you’d remember him. Of course, he’s not wearing his badge, and he has grown up a lot in the past two years.” He frowned. “He was supposed to be out of town for another week—went back East to visit his mother. Otherwise this wedding would have been a lot riskier, since he’s the only other man in town who knows you two by sight. Looks like he may have recognized you.”

“No, keep your seat, Mr. Heyes,” Judge Hanley said as he saw Heyes rise, looking a little bit alarmed. “I’ll handle this. If necessary, you can take them into custody, can’t you, Sheriff Trevors? To keep them from being arrested, while we explain things to Johnny?”

“Yeah, sure,” responded Lom. “Can he be trusted with the details?”

“I believe so. I’ve always found him extraordinarily trustworthy and intelligent, with a strong sense of justice. In fact, he was acting sheriff for a while, and did a very good job.”

Brubaker went to the door to let Hanley’s clerk know that it was all right to admit the young deputy. They had, of course, informed the clerk earlier that the legal conference was private and no visitors were to be permitted. The lawyer stepped back as Johnny Miller entered the room, then closed the door behind him and waved him to a chair. “This is a confidential legal conference, Johnny, but you looked like you had something important to say, so the judge said to let you in. Have a seat.”

The young man hesitated, finding himself the target of eight pairs of eyes. All of the men in the room were older than he, and in contrast to his casual shirt sleeves and vest, all were wearing business clothing, including the two men he had passed in the street, with their fashionable Homburgs laid on the table beside them—one brown, one gray. But with their hats off, the nagging feeling that he had seen them before turned into a certainty—well, almost a certainty. They looked so different, but …

“Judge,” he said, then stopped and swallowed. “I came to tell you that I thought I recognized these two men. I thought they were Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry, you know, those two outlaws we had in the jail here two years ago, when we had all that excitement about that Sheriff Clitterhouse gettin’ arrested and sent to the territorial prison for aiding in a jailbreak and receiving stolen property.”

At this news, Heyes and Kid exchanged pleased smiles. They knew that Clitterhouse had been arrested, but they hadn’t heard the details of what had happened to him.

The characteristic exchange of looks between the partners made Johnny certain of his identification. He looked at Judge Hanley. “I know they’re Heyes and Curry, Judge … but I can see there’s something unusual going on.” His gaze rested on Lom Trevors’s badge for a moment. “If you want me to go away and forget I ever saw them, I’ll do that.”

“That would be convenient, no doubt,” replied Hanley, “but I think that since you’re here, it would be better if we took you at least partially into our confidence. I’ll ask you to keep anything you learn here this morning to yourself, or to discuss it only with me or Mr. Brubaker.”

“If you’re in charge of whatever it is, Judge, it must be honest. That’s all I need to know. You’ve got my word to keep it quiet.” Feeling a little more at ease, Johnny finally accepted the chair to which Brubaker had waved him, and fixed his attention on the judge’s face.

“First, I believe introductions are in order. As two of you already know, this young man is Deputy Johnny Miller, who was left in charge of the sheriff’s office and the jail unexpectedly two years ago, when a tip I received from Mr. Heyes here resulted in the recapture of the men who had robbed our bank, the recovery of the sixty-two thousand dollars they had stolen, and our new sheriff, Curt Clitterhouse, being put behind bars for complicity in the jailbreak and for receiving stolen goods from that robbery.”

The young deputy’s eyes widened. The story of the tip was new, but it certainly explained one or two things that had previously been puzzling him.

“Johnny, allow me to introduce you: Sheriff Lom Trevors of Porterville, Wyoming, an old acquaintance of Mr. Heyes and Mr. Curry; Dr. Allan MacKenzie of Idaho Springs, Colorado, their friend and _de facto_ personal physician since they were obliged to stay in his house for three months last spring following the fracture of Mr. Curry’s leg; Richard Bancroft, Counsellor-at-Law, from Telluride, Colorado, currently retained as their attorney in addition to Brubaker here; and Paul Wellington, a horse rancher from northern Colorado, who became Mr. Heyes’s brother-in-law on Saturday.”

Everybody rose and shook hands, acknowledging the introductions with a word or two of greeting, but Johnny appeared rather overwhelmed as he resumed his seat. He looked at Wellington. “ _Brother-in-law_?”

Paul smiled. “Yes. My twin sister has been betrothed to Heyes for over a year, and Judge Hanley offered to marry them, to avoid several possible legal problems and the necessity of having to find a minister who knew Heyes’s true name and would keep it to himself. So all of us who were friends, family, or otherwise involved came as quickly as we could. We put everything together and managed to bring off the wedding on Saturday afternoon at the judge’s house.”

“And the Hanleys were kind enough to lend us their home for two days as a substitute for a honeymoon,” Heyes added with a grin. “If you meet us for lunch at the café today, you can meet my wife, and Miss O’More, who is betrothed to the Kid.”

“Sure,” Johnny managed to get out, reeling from one surprise after another, from Wellington’s British accent to Kid Curry being betrothed. “I’d like to meet Mrs. Heyes—uh, the ladies.”

“Ah, that brings up another point,” said Brubaker. “Naturally, they were married using Mr. Heyes’s real name, but for public purposes, Mr. Heyes and Mr. Curry are using the aliases given to them by Sheriff Trevors in the fall of ’seventy-nine: Joshua Smith …” he waved at Heyes “and Thaddeus Jones.”

“‘Given to them by Sheriff Trevors?” Johnny looked at the Wyoming lawman. 

Trevors nodded. “That’s where we get to the confidential part. First, let me ask you, Mr. Miller, what would you do if you found out that a pair of notorious outlaws, with fairly substantial rewards on their heads, had abandoned their former way of life and were living as honest citizens, assuming that they weren’t wanted in your jurisdiction? Would you turn them in for the reward money? Help them out? Ignore them? Arrest them because it’s your job?”

The young deputy frowned, shooting a quick glance at Judge Hanley, who nodded reassuringly. “There’s no right or wrong answer, Deputy. Just answer the questions, if you please.”

“I think it would depend on what they were wanted for….” Johnny hesitated, looking at the two outlaws. “Is this just supposin’?”

“Just supposin’, for the moment,” agreed Trevors.

“Well, if they weren’t wanted for murder, or some other violent crime, so they weren’t a danger to society if I didn’t arrest ’em,” Miller said, frowning thoughtfully again, “I’m not the man to put a barrier in the way of somebody doin’ the right thing, tryin’ to turn his life around. I guess I’d want to see some proof they were actually going straight. If I saw that, I’d try to help them. Tell you one thing I wouldn’t do, and that’s turn ’em in or arrest ’em so’s I could get the reward. Look at Clitterhouse. He was so greedy for money that first he broke his word, one gentleman to another, so he could claim the reward on Heyes and Curry here, and then he let them other fellows talk him into helping ’em break jail so’s he could get his hands on the sixty-two thousand dollars from the bank robbery.” He paused, looking seriously around at the other men. “Kind of made me wonder about the whole reward system. Seems to me, if money can make a sheriff turn crooked, well, maybe we oughta think about the whole thing some other way.”

The two lawyers exchanged appreciative looks. Clearly the young man had given the matter a great deal of thought. If he continued to conduct himself in the same way, he would have a bright future ahead of him, even if he didn’t end up becoming a rich man.

Seeing that no one was commenting on his answers, Johnny ventured a question of his own. “Judge? You said something about Mr. Heyes here tippin’ you off about the jailbreak and about what Clitterhouse was doin’. I didn’t hear about that. It sure explains some things.”

Brubaker chuckled. “He passed me a note for the judge, outlining the whole plan, when he shook hands with me in the jail, before I said I couldn’t represent them because they didn’t have any money to speak of.[1] All the judge had to do was to have men waiting in the livery stable, while I acted on the suggestion, also in Mr. Heyes’s note, that the loot from the robbery would be found in Clitterhouse’s possession.”

“The whole plan? But how did he know? Neither he nor Mr. Curry spent that much time talking to the other four.” Johnny had put his finger unerringly on the one unexplained feature of the whole train of events.

“Well, Mr. Heyes? How _did_ you know?” Judge Hanley glanced sharply over toward the newly married outlaw.

Heyes hesitated. While he was perfectly willing to boast about his cleverness under normal circumstances, in this case he wondered if revealing more of his true motives at that time—to make sure that the despicable Clitterhouse didn’t get away with what he had tried to do—might make Judge Hanley think less of him, and the judge was a man whose good opinion he valued.

Richard Bancroft intervened. Heyes and Kid had told him the whole story, back in January, after he had agreed to act as their attorney. “My client wishes to say, off the record, that the entire plan was his idea. He simply primed the other outlaw leader, Ribs Johnson, with the details and encouraged Mr. Johnson to set up the jailbreak with Clitterhouse, claiming the plan as his own.” He looked around at the others with a bland smile. “My client’s motives were of the very highest, naturally. He wished to ensure the capture of a dishonest lawman as well as the recovery of the money, seeing that they had already managed to safely bring in all four of the bank robbers.”

Having difficulty keeping a straight face, Heyes focused his gaze on one of the pictures on the wall behind Hanley’s chair. It happened to be an engraving of the assassination of President Garfield, he noticed, which must have been made some time after Garfield’s death from an assassin’s bullet the previous autumn. Hanley regarded the two outlaws meditatively, but said nothing.

James G. Blaine supports President Garfield after the shooting

After a moment’s silence, Johnny spoke up. “Sheriff Trevors, I’d say that’s the sort of thing I’d be looking for, as proof these two were going straight. And after all, they didn’t run when they could have. They came and let themselves back into their cell—I never did understand that. I’d help ’em, if that’s what you were wondering. And then the judge let ’em go on a very low bail. I didn’t ask why—I could see things were happening that were none of my business. At any rate, I never thought badly of the judge for releasing two wanted bank robbers—figured he had a good reason.”

“That’s what we wanted to talk to you about,” said Trevors. “When he did that, Judge Hanley had reason to suppose what I already knew for certain. These fellows have been offered an amnesty by the governor of Wyoming if they can keep out of jail and keep their records clean for a couple of years. The amnesty deal is to be kept secret, which is what I’m asking you to do.” Johnny nodded.

“Meanwhile,” Trevors continued, “they’re still wanted, which makes things difficult for them, and for anybody who chooses to befriend them. A number of men who wish them well and would like to help them are gathered right here in this room this morning to discuss the matter of the amnesty.”

“All we need from you, Deputy Miller,” said Hanley, “is to keep all that in mind and keep matters to yourself. I don’t intend to involve you any further in this situation than you are already, by your recognition of Mr. Heyes and Mr. Curry this morning.”

The young deputy rose and picked up his hat. “In that case, I’d better get going and let you get on with your discussion. You can rely on me—all of you,” he added, with a quick look at Heyes and Curry, “not to do or say anything that would cause you any trouble.” At the door, he hesitated and looked back. “I was wonderin’ something, though. Mr. Curry, is it true you have a reputation as a fast draw?” Not waiting for an answer, he continued, with an air of diffidence that betrayed his youth, “Do you think you could teach me—give me some pointers—while you’re in town? If I’m plannin’ to continue being a deputy, maybe even be a sheriff some day, I could sure use some help.”

“Normally I’d say no,” replied Kid, “but as you say, if you’re gonna work as a sheriff, you could use that skill. But you need to know—if you build up your speed and accuracy, and get yourself any kind of a reputation, there will always be men out there who want to challenge you. You’ll never really have any peace, unless you’re careful to draw only when you absolutely have to. Even then—well, it’s not something you want to learn without thinkin’ a lot about it first. If you’re sure, we could get together after lunch today, I expect.” He paused a moment, thinking. “For all you know, there’s nothing I could show you. Maybe you’re faster than you think. I’m out of practice, anyway.” 

Heyes made a small sound between a choke and a snort, knowing that last remark was just modesty. His partner had been practising daily since his recovery from a broken leg the previous summer, especially after having found out, in December, that their friend Texas Ranger Chad Cooper was now able to out-draw him. Ignoring him, Kid continued, “Lom, would you help me out here? Challenge me, so Johnny can see?” He stood up and removed his suit coat, making his holstered Colt easier to reach. 

Lom stood up, making sure his own gun was loose in its holster and unobstructed. “Normally I wouldn’t be fool enough to do this,” he said deprecatingly. “All right, Kid, you ready?”

“When you are,” responded Kid. His eyes had gone cold and his jaw was set grimly, his usual reaction to the necessity of drawing his gun. He stood relaxed, utterly still, waiting for his opponent to make the first move.

Lom’s right hand dropped swiftly to his holster. Heyes noted, with interest, that their old friend was by no means slow himself. Kid’s gun was already in his hand, cocked and levelled, however, before Lom had lifted his gun more than a couple of inches.

“Hold it,” said Kid softly.

Trevors was staring at him. “You’re faster than you were the last time I saw that, years ago—a _lot_ faster.” He let his gun drop back into the holster, as Kid de-cocked and holstered his own. “Glad this was just a demonstration.”

Curry looked over at Johnny Miller, still standing by the door. “Well?”

“If you’re askin’ if I can use your help,” the young man said after a moment, “the answer’s yes. I’d appreciate anything you could show me. We could meet behind the livery stable—there’s room there to shoot without bothering anybody.”

“Glad to. After lunch, then.”

Miller nodded, touched his hat respectfully to the judge, and left, closing the door behind him.

“Now, gentlemen,” Judge Hanley leaned forward, steepling his fingers together as he rested his elbows on the arms of his chair. “It is abundantly obvious that our young friends here could use some legal help. Governor Hoyt has been putting them off, for whatever reason, for over two years now. Pressure needs to be applied to move the situation off dead centre.”

“That’s really kind of you, Your Honor,” said Heyes, “but there’s not a whole lot either Kid or I can do to put pressure on him. Either he’ll keep his promise to us, or he won’t. We don’t have any choice but to wait. We’ve thought about giving up on that, and just going to Oregon, or Europe, or somewhere, but …”

“No, don’t give up. Even if you can’t act for yourselves, there is a great deal that men who are able to act legally and who are well-disposed toward you both can do,” said Richard, “especially if there is documentary evidence proving that you have been travelling, and working at honest jobs, rather than holding up banks or trains in Wyoming, as you’ve already told me there is—thanks to the efforts of your ladies in collecting it.”

“One moment, Counsellor,” Hanley interrupted. “We’ll take that issue up later. At present, I want to outline what I have been thinking about ever since these gentlemen and Miss Wellington—as she was at the time—arrived here a week ago.”

“Go ahead, Your Honor.” Bancroft indicated his willingness to defer to the senior jurist.

“My idea is that we should form an informal association—we could call it the Heyes and Curry Amnesty Achievement Association, perhaps—right now, including all of us here present. Later, other friends of Mr. Heyes and Mr. Curry can be added as the opportunity arises. The primary purpose for this association is to ensure that Sheriff Trevors here is no longer your only contact with Governor Hoyt.” He looked solemnly at Heyes and Curry. “If something were to happen to him, the others can continue what he started, acting as a liaison with the governor on your behalf. The most appropriate persons to take such action will, of course, be your duly retained attorneys, but I propose to coordinate the efforts to achieve the granting of the amnesty from my office, if that is agreeable to all.”

Murmurs of consent rose from around the room. Bancroft spoke up. “Judge, if I could make one small alteration …” Receiving a nod, he continued, “It could be called the Curry and Heyes Amnesty Project, or C.H.A.P., for short. Easier to pronounce, and certainly easier to talk about by telegraph or letter.”

With a smile, Hanley nodded. 

Trevors said, “That’s a great idea, Judge. I’ve been worried for a long time about bein’ the only one who knew about the amnesty offer. If I get killed or somethin’, they’d be in real trouble. And I can’t really put any pressure on the governor either. All I’ve been able to do is keep reminding him about it occasionally. I’m not really sure what’s going on there, because John Hoyt’s known to be a trustworthy man whose word can be depended on. I’m sure he didn’t make that promise with no intention of keeping it. There aren’t any serious political considerations, in spite of what I told Heyes and the Kid once, because Hoyt’s a presidential appointee. He doesn’t have to prove anything except that he can do the job honestly, and he doesn’t have to answer to a legislature or a political party.”

“At this point,” said Brubaker, “we shouldn’t need to keep Mr. Heyes away from his bride any longer. We won’t need you, either, Mr. Curry.”

Trevors looked up as the two outlaws accepted their dismissal and rose to go. “We’ll keep you informed about the parts of this discussion that involve you. The only thing I can think of for now is that you should plan to come with me when I go back to Wyoming, which will probably be tomorrow, or the next day at the latest. I think I’m going to need you for a few days.”

“Sure thing, Lom,” replied Heyes. “We’ll plan on it. I’ll tell Paula.” He nodded to Hanley. “Your Honor, I can’t tell you how much we appreciate everything you’ve done, from marrying Paula and me to having this idea about trying to help us out with Governor Hoyt. We’re very grateful. Whatever you decide you want us to do, just let us know.” They went out and shut the door behind them, giving a friendly smile to the judge’s clerk as they passed his desk on their way downstairs.

*** *** ***

“I think,” said Kid as they crossed the street to the hotel, “that the governor is gonna get a surprise. I bet he never expected to have a judge and a pair of lawyers bothering him about us.”

Heyes sighed. “Kid, I’m wondering if he ever expected to have _anybody_ bothering him, even Lom. I think maybe he didn’t expect us to make it, you know, to be able to go straight, so he never made any plans for that. It’s not that I think he’d break his word, but …”

“Yeah, I wondered about that, too.” Spotting Lillian O’More coming through the doors of the hotel onto the verandah, Curry quickened his pace, leaving his partner without ceremony.

Lillian had seen him. She turned back to look over her shoulder into the lobby. “Paula! They’re out of the meeting! At least our boys are,” she added quickly. _As if that matters at all, when she’s not thinking of anybody but her husband_ , she thought to herself, moving out of the way quickly as her friend passed her in the doorway. Lillian stretched her hand out to her own young man as he bounded up the veranda steps.

“Let’s get out of the middle of the street,” Heyes murmured, barely refraining from embracing his wife in public as she hurried up to him. “We don’t want to be in the way if a buggy comes around that corner, and besides, I want to kiss you, and I can’t do that on the street.” 

“And why not?” Paula objected rebelliously. “Half the people in town know we’re newlyweds.” She stopped at the top of the verandah steps, turning to face him while he was still one step below her, just the right distance to compensate for the four-inch difference in their heights. 

Requiring no further encouragement, Heyes leaned forward to kiss her, very conscious of the amusement of his partner, just a few feet away. The four of them went on into the hotel lobby, where Kid began to relate the story of the unexpected encounter with the deputy, whom they would be meeting at lunch.

Interrupting the account of Johnny Miller knowing who they were, so that he would probably greet her by her true married name at lunch, Paula said, with some agitation, “I’m sorry. I believe I’ve left the money that I’ve been holding for you in our hotel room, Heyes. Would you come up with me and help me look, make sure nothing’s happened to it?” It was awkward, but the best she could come up with, as she reacted to the look on her husband’s face.

Kid looked at his watch. “Figure they’ll be expecting us over at the café around half-past twelve, about an hour and a half.” His partner nodded and the couple went upstairs after retrieving their room key from the desk clerk.

“He does seem a little distracted,” said Kid. He had been admiring his lady’s flower-print skirt and bodice, cut back to display a lace-edged pink blouse, and did not think to moderate what came into his head for the sake of the still-unmarried Lillian’s sensibilities.

“Oh, they both do,” replied Lillian, “but that’s not surprising, dear, is it? They’ve only been married two days.”

*** *** ***

In the hotel room, Paula retrieved the leather wallet and accompanying leather bag in which she kept the twenty-five percent of the boys’ funds that she had offered to hold in reserve for them, somewhat analogous to the general fund they had kept in a coffee tin in their Devil’s Hole days. She held the money out to her husband, who took it in a distracted fashion. Both spoke at once.

“I’m sorry, Hannibal, I couldn’t think of a better excuse….”

“How’d you know that I…?”

They both began to laugh. Heyes laid the money down on a chair and took his wife into his arms. “Really, sweetheart? You want…?”

“You?” she interrupted him. “Yes, I do. There’s plenty of time before we have to meet them for lunch.” Seeing an odd look on his face, she apologized. “Did I shock you? I didn’t really know what to say.”

“Of course you didn’t shock me. And like you said, we’ve got plenty of time—today, anyway.”

Putting her hand up to his face, she laid one finger across his mouth to silence any further objections, and allowed the other fingers to rest on his luxuriant, curly side whiskers.

Heyes laid his watch on the bed-side table where he could see it, and proceeded to forget all about any other concerns, at least temporarily.

*** *** ***

After lunch, the newly constituted CHAP reconvened in Judge Hanley’s chambers, while Kid Curry made good on his promise to meet Deputy Miller behind the livery stable for some tips on practising for speed and accuracy with his six-gun. Having nothing pressing that required her attention elsewhere, Lillian accompanied him, while the Heyeses went for a walk in the June sunshine, not yet so hot, at the higher elevation of Junction City, as to be uncomfortable.

In Hanley’s chambers, Dr. MacKenzie, who had not yet had occasion to contribute very much to the discussion, leaned forward in his chair and said earnestly, “I want to help them all I can, Judge. I don’t know what I can do—I’m a doctor, not an attorney—but I think it’s ridiculous they were promised an amnesty, to be granted on good behavior, and then it’s been over two years and no sign of it. I’d like to talk to Governor Hoyt myself. How much straighter does he want them to go? There must be some way I can be involved in this. And I’ll tell you somebody else who will want to help, and that’s my good friend Bob Anderson, the sheriff up in Idaho Springs. He knows who they are, knows about the amnesty offer …”

Allan MacKenzie, M.D.

Lom Trevors nodded. “So he does. I confirmed that to him myself, after telling him it was still supposed to be confidential.”

“Bob saw them foil a bank robbery last spring, when Curry was still on crutches with that broken leg. He’d certainly be willing to provide a character reference.”

“Foil a bank robbery?” exclaimed Brubaker, exchanging a glance with Judge Hanley. They had not heard this story.

“Well, it’s a long story,” replied MacKenzie, “and Sheriff Trevors here already knows it….”

“But the judge and Counsellor Brubaker don’t, and I’ve only heard tantalising bits and pieces, Doctor,” Wellington chimed in. “My sister was so busy looking after Heyes after he got himself a trifle damaged in that endeavour that she entirely neglected to tell me much of anything useful in her letter mentioning the robbery. So tell us!”

Dr. MacKenzie briefly outlined what had happened in Idaho Springs over a year ago—that two members of the Devil’s Hole gang had been in town, had promised Heyes and Kid they wouldn’t make trouble, had seen a gang of men setting up the bank, and had come to warn Heyes at the doctor’s house. There had not been time to warn the sheriff; in any case, Heyes had been reluctant to involve a law officer, but the two outlaws knew that something had to be done so that nobody in Wyoming would think they had had anything to do with a bank robbery. Heyes had drawn up a rudimentary plan involving his going through the back office window of the bank while Kid and Miss Wellington positioned themselves in the lobby. They had succeeding in stopping the robbery, with no one seriously hurt except the two robbers Kid had shot; Heyes had a cracked tooth and Kid suffered minor damage to his still unhealed leg.

“And, of course, Simpson,” finished MacKenzie, “who had foolishly attempted to get the Kid to drop his gun by striking him on that broken ankle, still in a cast, with the brass cuspidor … well, Bob and I arrived only just in time to pull Heyes off Simpson before he’d done more than break the idiot’s nose _and_ his collarbone.” He paused for a moment, remembering that scene. “Simpson probably won’t try that kind of thing again, even if he gets a chance. The whole gang was sent to prison later, after they’d healed up enough to stand trial.”

He looked over at Wellington. “Your sister was in the thick of it—she had concealed her revolver in her lap under her knitting, and was able to cover two of the robbers with it fairly early on. And she was kneeling beside Heyes, gun in hand, when I saw her, ready to blow Simpson’s head off if he tried to hurt Heyes, or do anything further to hurt the Kid. Things got a little more exciting than they expected, Heyes told me, but they did stop the robbery—quite successfully. Got themselves written up in the Rocky Mountain News—under their aliases, of course.”

Brubaker had been swiftly making notes on a legal pad, and now he looked up. “We can certainly use your testimony, Doctor, and that of Sheriff Anderson, not to mention that newspaper article.”

Bancroft nodded. “I’ve already secured a clipping of it for that purpose. We take the _Rocky Mountain News_ in Telluride, and Miss O’More was quite interested in that account.”

“According to my count, that makes …” Brubaker paused to run his finger down the pad “fourteen men and three women who know their names and know about the amnesty offer, and could give references either in person or by affidavit. That’s not counting the Jordan and Tapscott families, whom I think it would be better not to involve, or Mrs. Heyes, who cannot really provide a character reference for her husband.” He laid the list, organized in chronological order, on the table so everyone could see it.

> _Sheriff Lom Trevors (Wyoming)_
> 
> _Judge James and Mrs. Hanley, Counsellor Chester Brubaker (New Mexico)_
> 
> _Detective Harry Briscoe (Colorado)_
> 
> _Judge Carter, Sheriff Whittaker (Montana)_
> 
> _Miss Lillian O’More (Colorado)_
> 
> _Mr. Paul Wellington (Colorado)_
> 
> _Ranger Captain Edward Parmalee (Texas)_
> 
> _Ranger Erik Hunter (Texas)_
> 
> _Ranger Chad Cooper (Texas)_
> 
> _Dr. Allan MacKenzie, Sheriff Robert Anderson (Colorado)_
> 
> _Counsellor and Mrs. Richard Bancroft (Colorado)_
> 
> _Deputy Johnny Miller (New Mexico)_

“Are there any changes we should make? Any of these people who are not really reliable, or whose testimony would not help our clients? Personally, I would suggest that Detective Briscoe be asked only to supply a written affidavit rather than participating personally in this project, because of the nature of his prior association with Heyes and Curry, and that Deputy Miller should be omitted because of his age and lack of experience; otherwise, it is my opinion, gentlemen, that all of these, certainly all of the men, should be asked to be ready to supply affidavits and possibly personal testimony, when it comes to the point that Counsellor Bancroft and I need to arrange a personal meeting with Governor Hoyt.”

“Captain Parmalee wouldn’t be able to travel that far or be away from his post for that long,” said Wellington thoughtfully, “but Erik and Chad would come if they could possibly manage it, and I know Parmalee wouldn’t object to their absence. You’d have to plan for that. They have the furthest to come, and there is no north-south rail service in Texas yet, nor in southern New Mexico.”

“Sheriff Trevors, would these two from Montana be willing to participate?” asked Hanley. “You’re the only one amongst us who has spoken to them. I could write to them myself.”

“I think they would,” said Lom slowly. “Judge Carter was so impressed by the lengths Heyes went to, to keep an innocent man from being hanged, that he told me he had ended up with a very good opinion of both of them, even after he found out who they were. Even during the jailbreak Heyes pulled to get the fellow who was claimin’ to be Kid Curry out of there, they made sure nobody got hurt. Sheriff Whittaker was impressed with that. He’d been thinking that Heyes and the Devil’s Hole gang would go to any lengths to rescue Curry. He was prepared for a lot of shootin’, and was kinda surprised when it never happened.” He paused to gather his thoughts, remembering the conversation he’d had with the two men when he’d arrived in Red Rock, Montana.[2] “And they know about the amnesty, because after we’d talked for a while, and Judge Carter realized what Heyes and the Kid had done, and how hard they’d tried to keep straight with the law while they were doing it, he asked me straight out if that was what was in the wind.”

“Gentlemen?” Wellington said rather diffidently. He was by far the youngest man present, only valuable to the project by virtue of being Heyes’s brother-in-law, and was consequently unwilling to put himself forward too strongly. “The others will be expecting to meet us for supper over at the hotel. Perhaps we should think about heading in that direction.”

Judge Hanley drew out his watch. “You’re quite right. Let us plan to reconvene tomorrow morning. And I think that since what remains to be discussed is primarily of a legal nature, we shall only need to have Counsellor Brubaker and Counsellor Bancroft present. We can make certain later that everybody knows what has been discussed and decided, and what, if anything, is expected of Mr. Heyes and Mr. Curry at this point—I understand you had some plans to discuss with them, Mr. Brubaker—before the train leaves tomorrow for Denver and Durango. I know all of you will be planning to depart in one direction or the other.”

The men murmured agreement. Wellington had a fairly flexible time frame for returning to his ranch, and Bancroft had planned to wait on Miss O’More’s departure so he could escort her back to Telluride, but Dr. MacKenzie could not leave his practice for any considerable length of time, and Trevors was uneasy about leaving his deputy in charge alone for more than a week.

* * *

[1] We do not actually see this take place in “Jailbreak at Junction City,” but that is the only time Heyes had the opportunity to pass a note.

[2] See the story “Lom Trevors Goes to Red Rock, Montana,” by the same author, available on Archive of Our Own at this link: <https://archiveofourown.org/works/17368370> While technically not a part of this series, it is relevant to this discussion.


	10. One Final Wrinkle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lom Trevors introduces a startling suggestion in response to a legal difficulty facing Hannibal Heyes and his new wife.

**The morning of Wednesday, June 7th**

When Judge Hanley opened the door of his chambers to the two lawyers, he was surprised to see Sheriff Trevors accompanying them.

Sitting down, Trevors removed his hat. “I know I wasn’t invited, Your Honor, but last night Mr. Bancroft here said something to me which made me realize I’d better be here. There’s something else in the works, as far as the Heyeses are concerned, that we haven’t considered.”

“Please go on,” replied Hanley courteously.

“That’s up to me first.” Richard Bancroft opened the discussion. “Back in January, I had occasion to discuss future financial arrangements with Paul Wellington. He and his sister are joint owners of their ranch, and he wanted me to draw up the papers including Heyes on the title deed and as a member of the business partnership, to go into effect when he and Miss Wellington were married—though of course the papers cannot actually be filed, with Heyes’s true name on them, until he gets straight with the law.”

The others nodded. “Does Mr. Heyes know he will be marrying into ownership of the property?” asked Brubaker.

“Well, he does, but he told me he couldn’t think that far ahead until they get their amnesty. He said just to go ahead and do whatever Wellington suggested about the paperwork.” Richard took a swallow of his coffee and continued. “The matter I wanted to bring up here is that there are trusts, administered by a solicitor in London, holding most of the funds left by the twins’ father until certain conditions are met, though the trustees have authority to disburse a certain percentage of the funds each year for the use of the ranch. One of the conditions envisioned was that Miss Wellington might be married. Provisions were made for winding up the trust that is in her name, and transferring the funds to the control of her husband, or possibly to a new trust for the benefit of any children of the marriage. Mrs. Heyes, now that she is married, will find it very much more convenient to travel to London, preferably with her husband, to deal with the winding up of that trust in person. And when I mentioned that possibility in front of Sheriff Trevors here …”

Trevors took up the explanation. “I can see problems, if Heyes is out of the country, and Governor Hoyt wants to hear that Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones are travelling around the country, leading honest lives. He didn’t say that they couldn’t leave the country, and I’m not proposing to lie to him if the question comes up, but it would probably be better if he could continue to hear that Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones are doing what he expected. So that means, either Heyes can’t go to London when his wife goes, or they’ll have to wait until he gets his amnesty, or—I had an idea. Maybe another man could impersonate Joshua Smith. You know, travel around the country with the Kid, sign that alias to hotel registers, that kind of thing. I think that would fit the terms that Hoyt expects of them, if it didn’t go on for too long.”

The judge and the two lawyers looked at one another. The idea, though startling, had merit. “Would that be legal?” asked Brubaker.

“I think so.” Hanley was nodding. “It’s unusual, but then everything about this case is unusual. If it’s just a matter of maintaining the reputation that Mr. Heyes has already established here, I see nothing wrong with the idea. But who are you going to find who would be willing and able to do such a thing?”

“I don’t know,” confessed Trevors frankly. “It would have to be somebody who knows who they are and is willing to help them. He shouldn’t be wanted by the law himself; in fact, it would help if he could be a lawman, or at least have had some experience as a lawman. He should know about the amnesty, or be somebody we could trust with that information. And he has to be able to leave his home and job for a month or two without attracting attention. That’s why I’m not volunteering.”

“Of course, it would also help if the man is somebody with whom Jed Curry can get along for at least a short amount of time. I haven’t discussed this with either Heyes or Curry yet, since it’s still just an idea. I’m pretty sure they’ll do what I suggest—they trust me, I know—but this is bound to be difficult for Jed.” Bancroft was frowning.

Brubaker had been making notes. “Gentlemen, I suggest that all of us keep our eyes open for such a man, while you, Mr. Bancroft, explain the plan to the Heyeses and Mr. Curry. You can do that on the train north, since you’re leaving with them later today. The first one of us who finds a suitable candidate for the job should let the others know. If we are all agreed, then we arrange a meeting between him and our outlaw friends, and they take it from there.”

“Providing,” objected Lom, “that they bring him to see me before this plan goes into effect. If everything works out, the Heyeses could leave Wyoming by the Union Pacific hotel train to Council Bluffs, and go to Great Britain from there.”

“We’re agreed on that, then,” said the judge. “We can let one another know simply by saying that a candidate has been found for the London Project. And Heyes and Curry must be warned to keep in touch with me here, or to let me know where they may be found.”

“That’s easy enough,” Bancroft assured him. “Wellington will always know where they are. All you have to do is telegraph him at the ranch.” He wrote the address down on a piece of paper and gave it to Judge Hanley, who pocketed it.

A knock fell on the door. When Brubaker got up to open it, Paul Wellington was seen to be waiting outside. “That train leaves in less than an hour. I’ve seen to it that all the luggage has been carried down to the depot. Just thought I’d best let you know.”

“Quite right.” Bancroft rose, shaking hands with Hanley and Brubaker. “It’s been a pleasure getting to know you gentlemen, and I’m looking forward to a fruitful professional association in future. Mr. Brubaker, you’ll see to those documents we discussed?”

“I surely will.” The Junction City lawyer nodded. “It will be a pleasure, especially the projected law suit. And I’ll certainly consider your suggestion that you and I should form a partnership, even though most of the business must be conducted by wire. I’m all in favor of the idea.”

Shaking hands all around, the men descended to the street, where Bancroft and Trevors walked up the street to the depot and Wellington departed to find the two couples: one now married, one betrothed.


End file.
